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Lot Essay
Known for his iconic Concetto spaziale paintings, in which he disrupted the sanctity of the painted surface by cutting or punching holes, Lucio Fontana worked in a variety of media throughout his career. His ceramics were an important part of his oeuvre and allowed him to further explore his ideas in three dimensions. Here, in the present work, an iridescent glazed ceramic object illustrates his ongoing investigations into the nature of materiality and space; it bears the hallmarks of his painted canvases – the mysterious openings and incised surfaces – producing a highly organic sculpture which was not only groundbreaking in its materiality, but would also go on to influence both his generation and the next.
While Fontana’s paintings explored three-dimensionality through his famous buchi (‘holes’) and tagli (‘cuts’), the artist’s ceramics took these investigations to a new level. Measuring twelve inches across at its widest point, Untitled displays its animate form not only in its elegant silhouette, but also in the iridescent glazes that dazzle and reflect the world back onto itself. The mirror-smooth surface is interrupted by a thin incised line that winds its way around the globe, and two apertures – holes that open like amorphous craters, the sculptural equivalents to his buchi.
Fontana was the son of a sculptor, and had grown up surrounded by his father’s work. Early on he took an interest in working in three-dimensional forms, and continued to produce sculpture alongside his developing painting practice. With both artistic forms he explored the fine line between figuration and abstraction, and the shiny surface and dual openings of Untitled could be said to evoke an abstracted human face, in the tradition of Brâncuși’s modernist masterpiece Sleeping Muse, 1910 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). In his ceramics, he adopted the same rules as his paintings, thus remaining consistent in his treatment of his ideas across different media.
In the years before the Second World War, Fontana produced semi-figurative terracotta works that channelled his initial aspiration to spatialise visual art. Inspired by the grandiose, sculptural conceits of the Baroque, the interpenetration of substance and space in these works created a dynamic sense of movement. In the summer of 1959, Fontana embarked upon his series of nature (‘natures’) to which the present work relates, returning to sculpture – as Guido Ballo suggests – ‘in the way that perhaps responded most profoundly to his secret expressive needs’ (G. Ballo, Lucio Fontana, New York 1971, p. 172). With this new body of work, Fontana went beyond the flatness of a penetrated or slashed canvas, redefining solidity and nullity on a truly three-dimensional plane, and manifesting in plastic form his longing for an ‘art based on the unity of time and space’ (L. Fontana, ‘Manifesto Blanco’, reproduced in E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Milan 1998, p. 116).
While Fontana’s paintings explored three-dimensionality through his famous buchi (‘holes’) and tagli (‘cuts’), the artist’s ceramics took these investigations to a new level. Measuring twelve inches across at its widest point, Untitled displays its animate form not only in its elegant silhouette, but also in the iridescent glazes that dazzle and reflect the world back onto itself. The mirror-smooth surface is interrupted by a thin incised line that winds its way around the globe, and two apertures – holes that open like amorphous craters, the sculptural equivalents to his buchi.
Fontana was the son of a sculptor, and had grown up surrounded by his father’s work. Early on he took an interest in working in three-dimensional forms, and continued to produce sculpture alongside his developing painting practice. With both artistic forms he explored the fine line between figuration and abstraction, and the shiny surface and dual openings of Untitled could be said to evoke an abstracted human face, in the tradition of Brâncuși’s modernist masterpiece Sleeping Muse, 1910 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). In his ceramics, he adopted the same rules as his paintings, thus remaining consistent in his treatment of his ideas across different media.
In the years before the Second World War, Fontana produced semi-figurative terracotta works that channelled his initial aspiration to spatialise visual art. Inspired by the grandiose, sculptural conceits of the Baroque, the interpenetration of substance and space in these works created a dynamic sense of movement. In the summer of 1959, Fontana embarked upon his series of nature (‘natures’) to which the present work relates, returning to sculpture – as Guido Ballo suggests – ‘in the way that perhaps responded most profoundly to his secret expressive needs’ (G. Ballo, Lucio Fontana, New York 1971, p. 172). With this new body of work, Fontana went beyond the flatness of a penetrated or slashed canvas, redefining solidity and nullity on a truly three-dimensional plane, and manifesting in plastic form his longing for an ‘art based on the unity of time and space’ (L. Fontana, ‘Manifesto Blanco’, reproduced in E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Milan 1998, p. 116).