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Lot Essay
‘We plan to separate art from matter, to separate the sense of the eternal from the concern with the immortal. And it doesn’t matter to us if a gesture, once accomplished, lives for a second or for a millennium, for we are convinced that, having accomplished it, it is eternal’
(First Spatialist Manifesto, 1947, in E. Crispolti and R. Siligato (eds.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Rome, 1998, p. 118).
Conceived in 1959, Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, Natura is one of the largest and earliest works in a series entitled Nature (Nature). Begun in 1959, just after he had made his artistic breakthrough with the tagli, with this series Fontana presented his radical Spatialist theories in sculptural form, creating works that are regarded as some of the most significant of the post-war era. Returning to the medium of clay, Fontana created a variety of primeval and cosmic forms, which later developed into bulbous, spherical balls, each marked with the same violent slashes with which he penetrated his canvases. Concetto spaziale, Natura presents an oval mass that appears to have been sliced apart leaving an undulating, flattened surface, which is incised with a dramatic, gestural gash. Like a primeval piece of rock marked by elemental contour lines, this mysterious monolithic object has a wealth of visual connotations, appearing as a timeless relic of a bygone era marked with an ancient gesture that has transcended time and place, or a piece of cosmological matter emitted from the birth of the universe. Originally in the collection of Fontana’s wife, Teresita, Concetto spaziale, Natura is executed with a simplicity of means yet resonates with a powerful presence and, with its unidentifiable purpose or meaning, has a mysterious, unknowable and otherworldly aura.
Fontana conceived Concetto spaziale, Natura in a period of immense technological development. The Space Race had begun in 1957 when the first satellite, Sputnik, was launched into orbit by the USSR, followed in 1961 by the extraordinary moment that the first human being rocketed beyond the earth’s atmosphere and became the first man in space. With the advent of space travel and the ground breaking scientific advances that defined this era, Fontana sought a new art that would emulate these radical leaps forward in man’s conception of the universe. Appearing like a piece of primeval or cosmological material, Concetto spaziale, Natura has an astral presence, its mystery heightened by the slash that rips through its surface. Some years after Fontana executed the present work, he explained to Carla Lonzi that the Nature were originally inspired by the pioneering missions of astronauts who ventured into the great unknown beyond earth for the first time; he recalled, ‘I was thinking of those worlds, of the moon with these…holes, this terrible silence that causes us anguish, and the astronauts in a new world. And so…in the artist’s fantasy these immense things have been there for billions of years…man arrives, in mortal silence, in this anguish, and leaves a vital sign of his arrival…were these not still forms with a sign of wanting to make inert matter live?’ (Fontana quoted in E. Crispolti and R. Siligato (eds.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Rome, 1998, p. 243).
Fontana’s Spatialism was born from these radical discoveries. The new conception of space as an infinite and limitless realm revealed by the astronomical missions and scientific advancements enthralled Fontana. In his Spatial works – his buchi and tagli – he sought to incorporate this new fourth dimension into art by illuminating the mysterious dark void beyond the canvas. With the Nature series, by penetrating the dense, solid material of clay, which was later cast in bronze, Fontana extended his explorations into the relationship between space, time and movement. In Concetto spaziale, Natura, the flat surface of the canvas that had formed the basis of Fontana’s Spatial works until this point has been transformed into a solid mass. In the same way that Fontana activated the material of the canvas itself as well as the space surrounding it by piercing through it, with Concetto spaziale, Natura he has penetrated three-dimensional matter with one simplistic, resonating gesture, enabling him to further transcend matter and create a truly ‘spatial art’. After the artist had created some of the first Nature he wrote to his friend, the artist Jef Verheyen, ‘I am very pleased, I have managed to represent nothingness! This is the death of matter; pure life philosophy!’ (Fontana quoted in L. Massimo Barbero, Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York, exh. cat., Venice and New York, 2006-07, p. 202).
Concetto spaziale, Natura and the Nature series serve as a testament to Fontana’s life-long interest in the physical possibilities of sculptural materials. Having trained as a figurative sculptor with his father in Argentina from the age of eleven, Fontana’s earliest works from the late 1930s were polychrome ceramics, which demonstrate the artist’s delight in moulding and shaping the malleable medium of clay. It was through sculpture that Fontana first realised his artistic aims. When discussing the now lost Uomo Nero (Black Man) from 1928 he stated, ‘the problem of making art instinctively became clearer to me, neither painting nor sculpture, nor lines delimited in space, but continuity of space in matter’ (Fontana quoted in E. Crispolti and R. Siligato (eds.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Rome, 1998, p. 118). Fontana viewed his art as neither painting nor sculpture, creating instead ‘spatial art’, which through bringing together the dynamic concepts of space, time and motion transcended traditional artistic categories and expanded the boundaries of art, as Concetto spaziale, Natura demonstrates.
(First Spatialist Manifesto, 1947, in E. Crispolti and R. Siligato (eds.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Rome, 1998, p. 118).
Conceived in 1959, Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, Natura is one of the largest and earliest works in a series entitled Nature (Nature). Begun in 1959, just after he had made his artistic breakthrough with the tagli, with this series Fontana presented his radical Spatialist theories in sculptural form, creating works that are regarded as some of the most significant of the post-war era. Returning to the medium of clay, Fontana created a variety of primeval and cosmic forms, which later developed into bulbous, spherical balls, each marked with the same violent slashes with which he penetrated his canvases. Concetto spaziale, Natura presents an oval mass that appears to have been sliced apart leaving an undulating, flattened surface, which is incised with a dramatic, gestural gash. Like a primeval piece of rock marked by elemental contour lines, this mysterious monolithic object has a wealth of visual connotations, appearing as a timeless relic of a bygone era marked with an ancient gesture that has transcended time and place, or a piece of cosmological matter emitted from the birth of the universe. Originally in the collection of Fontana’s wife, Teresita, Concetto spaziale, Natura is executed with a simplicity of means yet resonates with a powerful presence and, with its unidentifiable purpose or meaning, has a mysterious, unknowable and otherworldly aura.
Fontana conceived Concetto spaziale, Natura in a period of immense technological development. The Space Race had begun in 1957 when the first satellite, Sputnik, was launched into orbit by the USSR, followed in 1961 by the extraordinary moment that the first human being rocketed beyond the earth’s atmosphere and became the first man in space. With the advent of space travel and the ground breaking scientific advances that defined this era, Fontana sought a new art that would emulate these radical leaps forward in man’s conception of the universe. Appearing like a piece of primeval or cosmological material, Concetto spaziale, Natura has an astral presence, its mystery heightened by the slash that rips through its surface. Some years after Fontana executed the present work, he explained to Carla Lonzi that the Nature were originally inspired by the pioneering missions of astronauts who ventured into the great unknown beyond earth for the first time; he recalled, ‘I was thinking of those worlds, of the moon with these…holes, this terrible silence that causes us anguish, and the astronauts in a new world. And so…in the artist’s fantasy these immense things have been there for billions of years…man arrives, in mortal silence, in this anguish, and leaves a vital sign of his arrival…were these not still forms with a sign of wanting to make inert matter live?’ (Fontana quoted in E. Crispolti and R. Siligato (eds.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Rome, 1998, p. 243).
Fontana’s Spatialism was born from these radical discoveries. The new conception of space as an infinite and limitless realm revealed by the astronomical missions and scientific advancements enthralled Fontana. In his Spatial works – his buchi and tagli – he sought to incorporate this new fourth dimension into art by illuminating the mysterious dark void beyond the canvas. With the Nature series, by penetrating the dense, solid material of clay, which was later cast in bronze, Fontana extended his explorations into the relationship between space, time and movement. In Concetto spaziale, Natura, the flat surface of the canvas that had formed the basis of Fontana’s Spatial works until this point has been transformed into a solid mass. In the same way that Fontana activated the material of the canvas itself as well as the space surrounding it by piercing through it, with Concetto spaziale, Natura he has penetrated three-dimensional matter with one simplistic, resonating gesture, enabling him to further transcend matter and create a truly ‘spatial art’. After the artist had created some of the first Nature he wrote to his friend, the artist Jef Verheyen, ‘I am very pleased, I have managed to represent nothingness! This is the death of matter; pure life philosophy!’ (Fontana quoted in L. Massimo Barbero, Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York, exh. cat., Venice and New York, 2006-07, p. 202).
Concetto spaziale, Natura and the Nature series serve as a testament to Fontana’s life-long interest in the physical possibilities of sculptural materials. Having trained as a figurative sculptor with his father in Argentina from the age of eleven, Fontana’s earliest works from the late 1930s were polychrome ceramics, which demonstrate the artist’s delight in moulding and shaping the malleable medium of clay. It was through sculpture that Fontana first realised his artistic aims. When discussing the now lost Uomo Nero (Black Man) from 1928 he stated, ‘the problem of making art instinctively became clearer to me, neither painting nor sculpture, nor lines delimited in space, but continuity of space in matter’ (Fontana quoted in E. Crispolti and R. Siligato (eds.), Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Rome, 1998, p. 118). Fontana viewed his art as neither painting nor sculpture, creating instead ‘spatial art’, which through bringing together the dynamic concepts of space, time and motion transcended traditional artistic categories and expanded the boundaries of art, as Concetto spaziale, Natura demonstrates.