.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Rows of holes have been punched through the surface of Lucio Fontana's pure, white Concetto spaziale. Executed in 1966-67, this work features an oval area with an incised boundary, articulated by the dark holes that have been gouged out of the surface. Rather than painting a pattern, Fontana has created it through these repeated punctures.
This picture, which has been in the hands of the same family since it was acquired directly from the artist, is one of Fontana's Buchi, or 'holes'. This was a series of works which had their inception in the late 1940s, when Fontana created a number of openings in works on paper, soon expanding this to the realm of painting, as is the case here. Fontana, formerly known as a sculptor and occasionally as a draughtsman, had found a way of fusing the plastic arts with the pictorial, creating a three-dimensional work of art by opening it up.
During the second half of the 1950s, Fontana's interest in the Buchi had waned, and for half a decade he had created fewer than ten per year. However, in 1960, the potential of this visual discovery was revived, just shortly after he had begun his 'slashes'. Concetto spaziale, then, dates from this resurgence. This picture, with its near-regular lines of holes, shows Fontana appearing to respond to the language of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The rows of dot-like holes appear to map out a flattened sphere. They look like an illustration of some kind, perhaps of the globe itself, as they are contained within the lightly-sketched boundary, as though they formed a world hanging in the centre of the picture surface. In taking this quasi-geometric approach, Fontana may have been responding to the Minimalism that had taken hold on the other side of the Atlantic. However, with its emphasis on the artist's touch - the ragged punctures that are such vivid evidence of Fontana's repeated movements in creating this picture - there is a clear humanism at work. In this sense, although Fontana may be paying homage to the age of science and of space travel which was so integral to his promotion of Spatial art, he has nonetheless disrupted the clinical, Minimalist appearance of the columns of holes, instead emphasising his own presence and personality, echoing the works of his young contemporary Eva Hesse.
With its white canvas and its emphasis on horizontality, Concetto spaziale can also be seen as a homage to another young artist, Piero Manzoni. Although he had died several years earlier, Manzoni remained an important figure in the art world. The legacy of his revolutionary works, which Fontana had admired and even collected, filters through to this day. Looking at the processions of apertures
in Concetto spaziale, one wonders if it is in part a response or even homage to Manzoni's Achromes, which often featured pleated, kaolin-soaked canvas that would arrange itself bearing a similarity to them.
Crucially, while Manzoni's Achromes were designed to remove the artist from the creative process, allowing the works to become near-autonomous objects devoid of signifiers, the perforations in Concetto spaziale insist upon our awareness of the artist's presence and his motions in creating the work. This is all the more the case because of the variety of mark that Fontana has managed to master in these rows of seemingly-similar holes: emphasising the sculptural character of this picture, he has punched the surface from the recto for some of the orifices and from the verso in others. Indeed, looking at the back of the picture, the viewer perceives the incredible attention to detail that the artist has paid in creating a work which at first glance may appear the result of a spontaneous and rapid act: with care, Fontana has painted the rows of holes which he has made from behind, meaning that the inside of each crater is covered in paint despite being from the unprimed verso. This demonstrates the importance that Fontana accorded the finished result in a work such as this, working to achieve a variety of textures in the surface without disrupting the sheer tabula rasa-like white canvas except with his punctures, his miniature voids.
Fontana's Spatial art has found a crisp manner of expression in Concetto spaziale. As well as featuring space in the holes that the artist has created, the rows together appear to form the outline of a planet-like shape, a flattened globe that seems to have been picked out with pixels like an early digital image. These grids recall depictions of the planet - a planet which mankind, during precisely this era, was finally managing to leave.
This picture, which has been in the hands of the same family since it was acquired directly from the artist, is one of Fontana's Buchi, or 'holes'. This was a series of works which had their inception in the late 1940s, when Fontana created a number of openings in works on paper, soon expanding this to the realm of painting, as is the case here. Fontana, formerly known as a sculptor and occasionally as a draughtsman, had found a way of fusing the plastic arts with the pictorial, creating a three-dimensional work of art by opening it up.
During the second half of the 1950s, Fontana's interest in the Buchi had waned, and for half a decade he had created fewer than ten per year. However, in 1960, the potential of this visual discovery was revived, just shortly after he had begun his 'slashes'. Concetto spaziale, then, dates from this resurgence. This picture, with its near-regular lines of holes, shows Fontana appearing to respond to the language of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The rows of dot-like holes appear to map out a flattened sphere. They look like an illustration of some kind, perhaps of the globe itself, as they are contained within the lightly-sketched boundary, as though they formed a world hanging in the centre of the picture surface. In taking this quasi-geometric approach, Fontana may have been responding to the Minimalism that had taken hold on the other side of the Atlantic. However, with its emphasis on the artist's touch - the ragged punctures that are such vivid evidence of Fontana's repeated movements in creating this picture - there is a clear humanism at work. In this sense, although Fontana may be paying homage to the age of science and of space travel which was so integral to his promotion of Spatial art, he has nonetheless disrupted the clinical, Minimalist appearance of the columns of holes, instead emphasising his own presence and personality, echoing the works of his young contemporary Eva Hesse.
With its white canvas and its emphasis on horizontality, Concetto spaziale can also be seen as a homage to another young artist, Piero Manzoni. Although he had died several years earlier, Manzoni remained an important figure in the art world. The legacy of his revolutionary works, which Fontana had admired and even collected, filters through to this day. Looking at the processions of apertures
in Concetto spaziale, one wonders if it is in part a response or even homage to Manzoni's Achromes, which often featured pleated, kaolin-soaked canvas that would arrange itself bearing a similarity to them.
Crucially, while Manzoni's Achromes were designed to remove the artist from the creative process, allowing the works to become near-autonomous objects devoid of signifiers, the perforations in Concetto spaziale insist upon our awareness of the artist's presence and his motions in creating the work. This is all the more the case because of the variety of mark that Fontana has managed to master in these rows of seemingly-similar holes: emphasising the sculptural character of this picture, he has punched the surface from the recto for some of the orifices and from the verso in others. Indeed, looking at the back of the picture, the viewer perceives the incredible attention to detail that the artist has paid in creating a work which at first glance may appear the result of a spontaneous and rapid act: with care, Fontana has painted the rows of holes which he has made from behind, meaning that the inside of each crater is covered in paint despite being from the unprimed verso. This demonstrates the importance that Fontana accorded the finished result in a work such as this, working to achieve a variety of textures in the surface without disrupting the sheer tabula rasa-like white canvas except with his punctures, his miniature voids.
Fontana's Spatial art has found a crisp manner of expression in Concetto spaziale. As well as featuring space in the holes that the artist has created, the rows together appear to form the outline of a planet-like shape, a flattened globe that seems to have been picked out with pixels like an early digital image. These grids recall depictions of the planet - a planet which mankind, during precisely this era, was finally managing to leave.