.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
As if gazing down at earth from space and seeing the sparkling networks of light radiating amidst the deep black of the cosmos, Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale of 1952 presents a poetic constellation of holes scattered across the gleaming white surface of the canvas. An early example of Fontana’s groundbreaking series, the buchi, this work showcases the artist’s greatest practice: the act of puncturing through the surface of the canvas to create an irrevocable hole that reveals a chasm of immaterial darkness. With this gesture, Fontana succeeded in transforming the two-dimensional surface of the canvas, the traditional site of artistic creation, into a three-dimensional object that both interacts and encompasses the surrounding space. And, at the same time, he was able to invoke the endless, dark and limitless realm of the cosmos, the place to which he wanted to transport the viewer. In this way, a work such as Concetto spaziale transcends the sum of its constituent, physical parts, to become an enigmatic and deeply poetic work that exists beyond the parameters of real space and time.
The buchi were the first artistic manifestation of Fontana’s movement, Spatialism, which he had conceived in 1947, while living in Buenos Aires. Spatialism, Fontana believed, would offer a new form of art that would perfectly encapsulate the new scientific and technological era in which he was living. With seismic developments in modern physics, space travel and technological inventions, life in the post-war era was changing fast, offering possibilities far beyond what people could have imagined in the decades prior. Within this new epoch, painted canvas or cast bronze sculpture appeared to Fontana as an entirely futile, antiquated and outmoded, unable to aptly reflect the zealously futuristic spirit that pervaded modern life. ‘Think about when there are big space stations’, Fontana later stated. ‘Do you think that the men of the future will build columns with capitals there? Or that they will call painters to paint?... No, art, as it is thought of today, will end’ (Fontana, quoted in A. White, ‘Art Beyond the Globe: Lucio Fontana’s Spatial Identity’, emaj online journal of art, no. 3, 2008, p. 2). Spatialism was therefore a movement that would transcended the distinctions of painting and sculpture, to instead encapsulate art forms in which, ‘Colour, the element of space, sound, the element of time and movement which takes place in time and in space, are the fundamental forms…which contains the four dimensions of existence, time and space’ (Manifesto Blanco, 1946 in E. Crispolti and R. Siligato, eds., Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Rome, 1998, p. 117).
When, just two years after his return to his native Italy in 1947, Fontana pierced through a piece of thick white paper, he immediately realised the groundbreaking aesthetic potential of this gesture and the artistic possibility that it offered. Using a pointed tool, he pierced these pieces in varying sizes from the back or from the front, creating a physical relief across the surface as the pieces of torn material protruded outwards. From paper, Fontana moved to canvas, painting the surface with oil paint before piercing through and experimenting with the size, shape and placement of the holes.
By puncturing the surface of the canvas, Fontana activated the space in front of and behind it, as well as infusing the flat two dimensional object with real space. The canvas was no longer a flat plane to be filled with a false illusion of reality, but instead became a three-dimensional object that existed in real space. ‘When I hit the canvas’, Fontana explained, ‘I sensed that I had made an important gesture. It was, in fact, not an incidental hole, it was a conscious hole: by making a hole in the picture I found a new dimension in the void. By making holes in the picture I invented the fourth dimension’ (Fontana, quoted in P. Gottschaller, Lucio Fontana: The Artist’s Materials, Los Angeles, 2012, p. 21). Just as Fontana had been liberated by seeing a painting by Picasso when he was a student, so he wished that the buchi would liberate other artists in the same way, positing an entirely new form of conceptual art making that would influence artists working within the post-war avant-garde for years to come (stated in an unpublished interview of 1963 with C. Cisventi, in P. Gottschaller, ibid., p. 4).
The buchi were the first artistic manifestation of Fontana’s movement, Spatialism, which he had conceived in 1947, while living in Buenos Aires. Spatialism, Fontana believed, would offer a new form of art that would perfectly encapsulate the new scientific and technological era in which he was living. With seismic developments in modern physics, space travel and technological inventions, life in the post-war era was changing fast, offering possibilities far beyond what people could have imagined in the decades prior. Within this new epoch, painted canvas or cast bronze sculpture appeared to Fontana as an entirely futile, antiquated and outmoded, unable to aptly reflect the zealously futuristic spirit that pervaded modern life. ‘Think about when there are big space stations’, Fontana later stated. ‘Do you think that the men of the future will build columns with capitals there? Or that they will call painters to paint?... No, art, as it is thought of today, will end’ (Fontana, quoted in A. White, ‘Art Beyond the Globe: Lucio Fontana’s Spatial Identity’, emaj online journal of art, no. 3, 2008, p. 2). Spatialism was therefore a movement that would transcended the distinctions of painting and sculpture, to instead encapsulate art forms in which, ‘Colour, the element of space, sound, the element of time and movement which takes place in time and in space, are the fundamental forms…which contains the four dimensions of existence, time and space’ (Manifesto Blanco, 1946 in E. Crispolti and R. Siligato, eds., Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Rome, 1998, p. 117).
When, just two years after his return to his native Italy in 1947, Fontana pierced through a piece of thick white paper, he immediately realised the groundbreaking aesthetic potential of this gesture and the artistic possibility that it offered. Using a pointed tool, he pierced these pieces in varying sizes from the back or from the front, creating a physical relief across the surface as the pieces of torn material protruded outwards. From paper, Fontana moved to canvas, painting the surface with oil paint before piercing through and experimenting with the size, shape and placement of the holes.
By puncturing the surface of the canvas, Fontana activated the space in front of and behind it, as well as infusing the flat two dimensional object with real space. The canvas was no longer a flat plane to be filled with a false illusion of reality, but instead became a three-dimensional object that existed in real space. ‘When I hit the canvas’, Fontana explained, ‘I sensed that I had made an important gesture. It was, in fact, not an incidental hole, it was a conscious hole: by making a hole in the picture I found a new dimension in the void. By making holes in the picture I invented the fourth dimension’ (Fontana, quoted in P. Gottschaller, Lucio Fontana: The Artist’s Materials, Los Angeles, 2012, p. 21). Just as Fontana had been liberated by seeing a painting by Picasso when he was a student, so he wished that the buchi would liberate other artists in the same way, positing an entirely new form of conceptual art making that would influence artists working within the post-war avant-garde for years to come (stated in an unpublished interview of 1963 with C. Cisventi, in P. Gottschaller, ibid., p. 4).