Concetto spaziale, Attese

' Ho messo una camicia ricamata a mano'
' I am wearing a hand embroidered shirt'
(Translation of the inscription on the reverse of the present work).



'With the slash I invented a formula that I don't think I can perfect. I managed with this formula to give the spectator an impression of spatial calm, of cosmic rigour, of serenity in infinity'
(L. Fontana, quoted in E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana: Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, vol. I, Milan 2006, p. 105).



Executed in 1968, Concetto spaziale, Attese is an expansive red monochrome surface with three rhythmic slashes created by Lucio Fontana in the last months of his life. Begun in 1958 and continuing right up until the artist's death in 1968, the tagli or 'cuts' are the artist's most elegant physical embodiment of his 'Spatialist' ideology and are perhaps the most recognisable form from his oeuvre. Situated as a forefather of Conceptual art, 'through his Cuts, Fontana demonstrated that the dominant tendency of contemporary art-toward the glorification of human gesture-amounted to that gesture's eradication. By virtue of this insight, Fontana was able to develop an alternative visual language that memorialized the utopian origins of modern painting' (A. White, 'Industrial Painting's Utopias: Lucio Fontana's 'Expectations'', October, vol. 124, Spring, 2008, p. 99). Indeed, toward the end of his life, Fontana's concepts were finding outlets in the conceptual art movements of the 1960s and his work was celebrated on an international scale, heralded by the inclusion of his spatial environments in the Venice Biennale and Documenta.

In 1966 Fontana won the Grand Prize for Painting at the XXXIII Venice Biennale for his Ambiente Spaziale, a grand installation which saw the artist taking his iconic gesture to a new level of ambition. Executed at a time of contentment, 1968 marked Fontana's retirement from Milan to the small town of Comabbio, near Varese. Typical of his later works, Fontana documented his daily experiences, poetically musing on the back of this work that on its day of creation, he was wearing an embroidered shirt. Fontana said of his cuts, 'with the slash I invented a formula that I don't think I can perfect. I managed with this formula to give the spectator an impression of spatial calm, of cosmic rigour, of serenity in infinity' (L. Fontana, quoted in E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana: Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, Vol. I, Milan 2006, p. 105). Fontana was keenly aware of the scientific and technological advancements of the Space Age, and the new extraordinary possibilities these discoveries offered to modern man. In his art he looked to present this future in a new aesthetic vision. His 'Spatialist' theory was conceived as a conceptual counterpoint to the revolution in man's thinking due to the Space Age. From his pioneering Manifesto Blanco in 1946 through to his last interview in 1968, Fontana sought to capture this change in mentality by conceiving of an art that championed space, movement and time as its core materials.

In this work, the progressive disruption of the slashes across the canvas echoes the artist's own movements, their irregular spacing reflecting a sense of Fontana's own engagement with the work. By cutting through the surface of the canvas, Fontana succeeded in transforming the art of painting and picture-making beyond two dimensions, opening the boundaries of the picture plane to the infinite dimensions of space that exist beyond its surface. In this expansion beyond two-dimensionality, Fontana highlighted the material properties not just of the work, but of space itself. In so doing, he has engaged with the notion that material, space, time and energy are interrelated. While these gestures were often interpreted as a violent attack on painting, Fontana defended his tagli as essentially actions that opened up painting to new 'Spatialist' dimensions. 'The cuts or rather the holes..., did not signify the destruction' Fontana explained, 'the abstract gesture of which I have been accused so often... it introduced a dimension beyond the painting itself; this was the freedom to produce art whatever by means and in whatever form' (L. Fontana, quoted in S. Whitfield, Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., London, October, 1999, p. 122).

Fontana's desire to create an art that remained relevant in the era of space exploration and scientific discovery is evident in the gestural cuts he has employed to create Concetto spaziale, Attese. Like ripples in the space-time continuum, these gestures express the essence of space, matter and movement interacting with material. For the artist, the capturing of movement in art was the last frontier and one that had only become recently possible within the 20th century. As Fontana noted in his Manifesto Blanco, 'art continues to develop itself in the direction of movement... the evolution of man is a march towards movement developed in time and space' (L. Fontana, Manifesto Blanco, 1946, in R. Fuchs, Lucio Fontana: la cultura dell'occhio, exh. cat., Castello di Riovli, Rivoli, 1986, p. 79). His slashes, the visible manifestation of the movements of the arm and the knife, are themselves an artwork that exists not only in Space, but also in Time. The actuality of the gesture, this irrevocable sign of the work's execution and its ultimate infusion of space into the material of the picture plane, presents the void created beyond the surface of the canvas, and immortalises the fleeting moment of its creation for eternity. This eternal aspect of the gestural act was important for Fontana. Transcending space and time, the tagli epitomise his use of the word 'expectations' in Concetto spaziale. 'I don't want to make a picture I want to open a space, to create a new dimension for art, to connect it up with the cosmos as it lies infinitely outstretched, beyond the flat surface or the image' (L. Fontana, quoted in G. Brownstone, Lucio Fontana, Paris 1970, p. 8).