Lot Essay
This work is registered at Fondazione Lucio Fontana that has confirmed authenticity.
The four calligraphic slashes in Concetto Spaziale, Attese, executed in 1958, are elegant portals to a world beyond the two dimensions of painting. Applying his Stanley knife to the flat surface of painting, Fontana introduced a new way of appreciating art, providing us with a type of painting suited to the era of technological wonders and space travel. Just as man managed to loosen the bonds of gravity and see the world from above, so Fontana has loosened the bonds of painting with a gestural sweep of the knife, not the brush.
The group of slashes that articulate Concetto Spaziale, Attese move across the canvas, emphasizing the viewer's attention on their physicality, and invoking the artist's movement as he went. In this way, Concetto Spaziale, Attese highlights the importance of the gesture itself, rather than the painting. It is thus the perfect example of one of the central tenets of Spatialism, celebrating the eternal nature of the gesture: 'it doesn't matter to us if a gesture, once accomplished, lives for a second or a millennium, for we are convinced that, having accomplished it, it is eternal' ("The First Spatial Manifesto," E. Crispolti & R. Siligato, eds., Lucio Fontana, Milan, 1998, p. 118).
The four calligraphic slashes in Concetto Spaziale, Attese, executed in 1958, are elegant portals to a world beyond the two dimensions of painting. Applying his Stanley knife to the flat surface of painting, Fontana introduced a new way of appreciating art, providing us with a type of painting suited to the era of technological wonders and space travel. Just as man managed to loosen the bonds of gravity and see the world from above, so Fontana has loosened the bonds of painting with a gestural sweep of the knife, not the brush.
The group of slashes that articulate Concetto Spaziale, Attese move across the canvas, emphasizing the viewer's attention on their physicality, and invoking the artist's movement as he went. In this way, Concetto Spaziale, Attese highlights the importance of the gesture itself, rather than the painting. It is thus the perfect example of one of the central tenets of Spatialism, celebrating the eternal nature of the gesture: 'it doesn't matter to us if a gesture, once accomplished, lives for a second or a millennium, for we are convinced that, having accomplished it, it is eternal' ("The First Spatial Manifesto," E. Crispolti & R. Siligato, eds., Lucio Fontana, Milan, 1998, p. 118).