.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Concetto spaziale belongs to a unique group of works produced by Fontana, primarily in the early 1960s. Following the tenets of his Spatialist theories, Fontana's work always lingers on an ambiguous border, where painting takes on the characteristics of sculpture. While his output had, since the publication of the Manifesto blanco in Argentina almost twenty years earlier, been concerned not only with the blurring of formerly distinct media, but with the future, with gestures and with opening new possibilities for art in the modern age, it was the Space Age that truly made an impact on the artist. Executed in 1961 Concetto spaziale was made in the wake of Yuri Gagarin's epic journey into space. Having avidly followed the progress of space travel and exploration, Fontana endeavoured to conceptually address the metaphysical implications of these developments in his art. During this year, whilst working on an Ambienti environmental installation at the Italia '61 exhibition in Turin, Fontana shared his feelings of fascination with, and dread of, the vastness of outer space with the collaborating architects: 'That was the time of the first space flights. Fontana came to see us one morning and began talking about that 'nightmare sky': it seemed that in space there was a total darkness and this news had greatly struck him' (E. Monti quoted in S. Whitfield, Fontana, exh. cat., London, October 1999, p. 195).
With man breaking through Earth's atmospheric barrier, suddenly the cosmos appeared to open itself up as a new dimension of possibility for humanity. In Concetto spaziale, Fontana has represented the achievement of this new perspective both through the holes, and through his incised outlines. Experimenting with the traditional medium of oil paint as a gesturally expressive textural and spatial addition to the predominantly flat surface of his canvases, he clearly revels in viscous quality of his materials and the interplay of depth from void to tactile relief. The luscious surface of the paint, violated with a torrent of jabbed holes that increase in size from pinpricks to small slits, recall both a distant constellation studded with supernovas and the pockmarked landscape of an arid red planet. The haphazard stab wounds, coagulated at the edges with encrusted lips of paint, are encircled by sketchy striations gouged into the thick, ductile pigment. Significantly, the lines are created by a removal, rather than an application of paint. By scraping away to create furrows as his defining line, Fontana mimics the duality of absence and presence caused by the punctured holes and cuts. This enigmatic ovoid perimeter, typical of the oil paintings of this period, were later described by Fontana as 'the path of man in space, his dismay and horror of going astray', whilst the incisions through the canvas represented 'the subsequent gesture of an anxiety that had grown unbearable' (L. Fontana quoted in B. Hess, Lucio Fontana, 1899-1968: A New Fact In Sculpture, Cologne, 2006, p. 68). Concetto spaziale not only opens up the picture plane to allow energy and light to pass through into the cosmos beyond, but stands as an fervent existential response to the disquieting idea of man drifting endlessly in space.
With man breaking through Earth's atmospheric barrier, suddenly the cosmos appeared to open itself up as a new dimension of possibility for humanity. In Concetto spaziale, Fontana has represented the achievement of this new perspective both through the holes, and through his incised outlines. Experimenting with the traditional medium of oil paint as a gesturally expressive textural and spatial addition to the predominantly flat surface of his canvases, he clearly revels in viscous quality of his materials and the interplay of depth from void to tactile relief. The luscious surface of the paint, violated with a torrent of jabbed holes that increase in size from pinpricks to small slits, recall both a distant constellation studded with supernovas and the pockmarked landscape of an arid red planet. The haphazard stab wounds, coagulated at the edges with encrusted lips of paint, are encircled by sketchy striations gouged into the thick, ductile pigment. Significantly, the lines are created by a removal, rather than an application of paint. By scraping away to create furrows as his defining line, Fontana mimics the duality of absence and presence caused by the punctured holes and cuts. This enigmatic ovoid perimeter, typical of the oil paintings of this period, were later described by Fontana as 'the path of man in space, his dismay and horror of going astray', whilst the incisions through the canvas represented 'the subsequent gesture of an anxiety that had grown unbearable' (L. Fontana quoted in B. Hess, Lucio Fontana, 1899-1968: A New Fact In Sculpture, Cologne, 2006, p. 68). Concetto spaziale not only opens up the picture plane to allow energy and light to pass through into the cosmos beyond, but stands as an fervent existential response to the disquieting idea of man drifting endlessly in space.