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Lot Essay
'Gold is as beautiful as the sun'.
L. Fontana, quoted in L. Massimo Barbero (ed.), Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York, exh. cat., Venice & New York, 2006, p. 24.
Concetto spaziale, Attesa, one of the rare examples in this colour, is an elegant expression of Lucio Fontana's most celebrated motif: the slash. Painted in 1959, this work is one of the earliest of Fontana's Tagli, or 'Cuts', the iconic slashed canvases in which he opened up the picture surface, revealing it as a three-dimensional object. Concetto spaziale, Attesa is one of the early examples in which Fontana explored the visual impact of the slash upon a vertical canvas: he had previously made a large number of his Tagli using the landscape format, often with multiple small punctures. Now this was giving way to the ultimate expression of his Spatialism, the single vertical cut. In Concetto spaziale, Attesa, this is accentuated by the bands of paint that cross the canvas horizontally in black and gold, a colour with associations to the precious metal of the same name, which has been important both to the ancient world and to that of the scientific era of space flight which provided the backdrop to Fontana's work during this period.
It was only in 1959, the year that Concetto spaziale, Attesa was created, that Fontana revealed this group of works to the world. They had been developing in relative privacy over the previous couple of years, first in works on paper sporting numerous incisions and then, from 1958, in canvases. In February 1959 he unveiled the Attese at a show at the Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, before showing them at the Galerie Stadler in Paris. This was a show originally conceived as showing his Inchiostri, pictures which had a greater emphasis on the painted matter of the surface, extending the Art Informel idiom. Now, such materiality was apparently being jettisoned in favour of a crisper, sheerer aesthetic. Unlike the monochrome canvases that are often used in the Attese, here Fontana has added to the dynamic thrust of the vertical slash by contrasting it with the horizontal bars of gold and black. This adds to the impression of the slash's upward thrust, giving a sense of its arcing upwards, escaping the pull of gravity of the world which is hinted at by the horizons. The use of gold may hint at materiality, while the black hints at the void and the cosmos. Indeed, the slash appears to merge with the black background, adding to the poetic evocation of the void.
After 1959, many of Fontana's Attese were painted on monochrome, vertical canvases. By the time Concetto spaziale, Attesa was painted, this formula had not yet been set in stone, hence the ribbons of gold that cross the canvas, precursors to the celebrated Venice series he would create two years later in which metallic paint played a central role. It would appear that Fontana approved of Concetto spaziale, Attesa, as it was exhibited in an important lifetime show of his work at the Galleria Blu in Milan in 1964. At the same time, the provenance itself hints at the works importance: it was cited as being in the Camuffo collection in Venice. This would appear to be the collection of Giovanni Camuffo, who had helped to helm the Galleria del Leone in Venice, which opened in 1962. Indeed, the gallery held several exhibitions dedicated to Fontana, including one in the year of its inauguration.
The development of the Tagli such as Concetto spaziale, Attesa coincides with the real leaps forward that were made in the Space Race. While Fontana had known about rocket technology, which had been significantly honed in the form of weaponry during the Second World War, it was in 1957, the year in which the Tagli began to appear in his works on paper, that the USSR succeeded in launching the Sputnik satellite into an orbit above the Earth and its atmosphere. To Fontana, this appeared to be a vast stride, as Man's relationship to our planet became less a priori than had hitherto been the case.
'The stone age, the age of fire, the iron age entered the lives of peoples as eras of new civilizations.
'We have entered the space age, man has discovered the distances between earth and the planets, man's goal is to conquer them, man with his inventions of the last hundred years has sped humanity to achieve the impossible - all this has influenced and influences the artist's creative spirit, 'isms' dominate our time. Art is not decadence but is slowly penetrating the new development in the media of art...
'Spatial artists do not consider themselves geniuses, they feel at home in their era' (Fontana, quoted in E. Crispolti & R. Siligato (ed.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Milan, 1998, p.146).
Perhaps it was with a view to this that Fontana selected the metallic sheen of gold for Concetto spaziale, Attesa. This manages to hark back to ancient notions of wealth, as well as the gold-ground panels of mediaeval religious art. At the same time, it invokes the metal surfaces used in scientific contexts, not least in space travel. Indeed, gold itself is often used for various purposes in satellites and space suits, for instance shielding. In making reference to this material by using gold-coloured paint, then, Fontana is showing an awareness of the history of religious painting and also the extent to which he indeed feels 'at home in his era'.
Fontana, who was long involved in commissions in religious buildings, be it mausoleums or church doors and other projects, was acutely aware of the redundancy of traditional art in places of worship in the modern era. In a sense, Concetto spaziale, Attesa can be seen as the result of his quest for a new visual idiom that would reflect the age in which he was living, an age in which pictures of the annunciation and sculptures of saints clutching the weapons with which they were martyred no longer hold the same resonance that they did, watered down by the incipient rise in science, photography and the media. As Fontana himself pointed out, 'God is invisible, God is incomprehensible; this is why no artist today can depict God seated on a throne with the world in his hands and a beard... The religions, too, must adapt themselves to the state of science' (Fontana, quoted in B. Hess, Lucio Fontana 1899-1968: 'A New Fact in Sculpture', Cologne, 2006, p. 68). The use of golden paint in Concetto spaziale, Attesa thus emphasises this point of departure: he was using the visual language of old master altarpieces yet twisting it to far more modern means. At the same time, it is the space that Fontana himself has opened up within the canvas that is most emblematic of the all-seeing yet invisible deity of the Christianity in which the artist was raised.
The gold in Concetto spaziale, Attesa also recalls the alchemists who claimed to convert base metals into gold. After all, art itself is a form of quasi-alchemical transformation. However, Fontana is pushing even further: he is taking the material and creating the immaterial, introducing the void into the very fabric of his work. It is this three- (or indeed four-) dimensional space that is at the heart of Concetto spaziale, Attesa. The gap that has been opened up within its very fabric is the central focus and the zone of potentiality, revealing Fontana introducing a new art and a new age alike.
L. Fontana, quoted in L. Massimo Barbero (ed.), Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York, exh. cat., Venice & New York, 2006, p. 24.
Concetto spaziale, Attesa, one of the rare examples in this colour, is an elegant expression of Lucio Fontana's most celebrated motif: the slash. Painted in 1959, this work is one of the earliest of Fontana's Tagli, or 'Cuts', the iconic slashed canvases in which he opened up the picture surface, revealing it as a three-dimensional object. Concetto spaziale, Attesa is one of the early examples in which Fontana explored the visual impact of the slash upon a vertical canvas: he had previously made a large number of his Tagli using the landscape format, often with multiple small punctures. Now this was giving way to the ultimate expression of his Spatialism, the single vertical cut. In Concetto spaziale, Attesa, this is accentuated by the bands of paint that cross the canvas horizontally in black and gold, a colour with associations to the precious metal of the same name, which has been important both to the ancient world and to that of the scientific era of space flight which provided the backdrop to Fontana's work during this period.
It was only in 1959, the year that Concetto spaziale, Attesa was created, that Fontana revealed this group of works to the world. They had been developing in relative privacy over the previous couple of years, first in works on paper sporting numerous incisions and then, from 1958, in canvases. In February 1959 he unveiled the Attese at a show at the Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, before showing them at the Galerie Stadler in Paris. This was a show originally conceived as showing his Inchiostri, pictures which had a greater emphasis on the painted matter of the surface, extending the Art Informel idiom. Now, such materiality was apparently being jettisoned in favour of a crisper, sheerer aesthetic. Unlike the monochrome canvases that are often used in the Attese, here Fontana has added to the dynamic thrust of the vertical slash by contrasting it with the horizontal bars of gold and black. This adds to the impression of the slash's upward thrust, giving a sense of its arcing upwards, escaping the pull of gravity of the world which is hinted at by the horizons. The use of gold may hint at materiality, while the black hints at the void and the cosmos. Indeed, the slash appears to merge with the black background, adding to the poetic evocation of the void.
After 1959, many of Fontana's Attese were painted on monochrome, vertical canvases. By the time Concetto spaziale, Attesa was painted, this formula had not yet been set in stone, hence the ribbons of gold that cross the canvas, precursors to the celebrated Venice series he would create two years later in which metallic paint played a central role. It would appear that Fontana approved of Concetto spaziale, Attesa, as it was exhibited in an important lifetime show of his work at the Galleria Blu in Milan in 1964. At the same time, the provenance itself hints at the works importance: it was cited as being in the Camuffo collection in Venice. This would appear to be the collection of Giovanni Camuffo, who had helped to helm the Galleria del Leone in Venice, which opened in 1962. Indeed, the gallery held several exhibitions dedicated to Fontana, including one in the year of its inauguration.
The development of the Tagli such as Concetto spaziale, Attesa coincides with the real leaps forward that were made in the Space Race. While Fontana had known about rocket technology, which had been significantly honed in the form of weaponry during the Second World War, it was in 1957, the year in which the Tagli began to appear in his works on paper, that the USSR succeeded in launching the Sputnik satellite into an orbit above the Earth and its atmosphere. To Fontana, this appeared to be a vast stride, as Man's relationship to our planet became less a priori than had hitherto been the case.
'The stone age, the age of fire, the iron age entered the lives of peoples as eras of new civilizations.
'We have entered the space age, man has discovered the distances between earth and the planets, man's goal is to conquer them, man with his inventions of the last hundred years has sped humanity to achieve the impossible - all this has influenced and influences the artist's creative spirit, 'isms' dominate our time. Art is not decadence but is slowly penetrating the new development in the media of art...
'Spatial artists do not consider themselves geniuses, they feel at home in their era' (Fontana, quoted in E. Crispolti & R. Siligato (ed.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Milan, 1998, p.146).
Perhaps it was with a view to this that Fontana selected the metallic sheen of gold for Concetto spaziale, Attesa. This manages to hark back to ancient notions of wealth, as well as the gold-ground panels of mediaeval religious art. At the same time, it invokes the metal surfaces used in scientific contexts, not least in space travel. Indeed, gold itself is often used for various purposes in satellites and space suits, for instance shielding. In making reference to this material by using gold-coloured paint, then, Fontana is showing an awareness of the history of religious painting and also the extent to which he indeed feels 'at home in his era'.
Fontana, who was long involved in commissions in religious buildings, be it mausoleums or church doors and other projects, was acutely aware of the redundancy of traditional art in places of worship in the modern era. In a sense, Concetto spaziale, Attesa can be seen as the result of his quest for a new visual idiom that would reflect the age in which he was living, an age in which pictures of the annunciation and sculptures of saints clutching the weapons with which they were martyred no longer hold the same resonance that they did, watered down by the incipient rise in science, photography and the media. As Fontana himself pointed out, 'God is invisible, God is incomprehensible; this is why no artist today can depict God seated on a throne with the world in his hands and a beard... The religions, too, must adapt themselves to the state of science' (Fontana, quoted in B. Hess, Lucio Fontana 1899-1968: 'A New Fact in Sculpture', Cologne, 2006, p. 68). The use of golden paint in Concetto spaziale, Attesa thus emphasises this point of departure: he was using the visual language of old master altarpieces yet twisting it to far more modern means. At the same time, it is the space that Fontana himself has opened up within the canvas that is most emblematic of the all-seeing yet invisible deity of the Christianity in which the artist was raised.
The gold in Concetto spaziale, Attesa also recalls the alchemists who claimed to convert base metals into gold. After all, art itself is a form of quasi-alchemical transformation. However, Fontana is pushing even further: he is taking the material and creating the immaterial, introducing the void into the very fabric of his work. It is this three- (or indeed four-) dimensional space that is at the heart of Concetto spaziale, Attesa. The gap that has been opened up within its very fabric is the central focus and the zone of potentiality, revealing Fontana introducing a new art and a new age alike.