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拍品专文
Five slashes mark the shimmering silver surface of Concetto spaziale, a luminous early example of Lucio Fontana’s series of tagli (cuts). Executed in 1959, it is one of eighteen of this colour, and the only with this number of slashes. In 1962 and 1975, the work was included in two exhibitions at Tokyo’s Minami Gallery: an important centre for contemporary art and one of the first galleries in Japan to exhibit works by post-war artists including Jasper Johns and Sam Francis, among countless others. Acquired from the gallery by the present owner during this period, Concetto spaziale is a dazzling, ethereal astral vision. Eliminating image and illusion—deemed superfluous by Fontana at the height of the Space Age—the sweep of the artist's hand through the canvas crystallises his career-long conceptual enquiries. ‘With the taglio', he explained, 'I have invented a formula that I think I cannot perfect … I succeeded in giving those looking at my work a sense of spatial calm, of cosmic rigour, of serenity with regard to the Infinite. Further than this I could not go’ (L. Fontana, quoted in P. Gottschaller, Lucio Fontana: The Artist’s Materials, Los Angeles 2012, p. 58).
Since he returned to Italy from Argentina in 1947, Fontana sought a new visual idiom: one that would respond to and embody the technological advancements of his era. Like the astronauts dreaming of the stars, so too did Fontana hope to uncover new dimensions: indeed, the silvery surface of Concetto spaziale seems to contain the whole of the cosmos. In an effort to integrate light, time, movement and space into his paintings, Fontana jettisoned the traditional modes in which he had previously worked, and instead began to create ‘Spatial concepts’ (concetti spaziali). By slicing into the pictorial plane, he transformed the canvas from a site of illusion to a three-dimensional object: behind each cut resides a vast, unknowable, and unreachable expanse. ‘I do not want to make a painting,’ explained Fontana. ‘I want to open up space’ (L. Fontana, quoted in J. van der Marck and E. Crispolti, La Connaissance, Brussels 1974, p. 7).
Since he returned to Italy from Argentina in 1947, Fontana sought a new visual idiom: one that would respond to and embody the technological advancements of his era. Like the astronauts dreaming of the stars, so too did Fontana hope to uncover new dimensions: indeed, the silvery surface of Concetto spaziale seems to contain the whole of the cosmos. In an effort to integrate light, time, movement and space into his paintings, Fontana jettisoned the traditional modes in which he had previously worked, and instead began to create ‘Spatial concepts’ (concetti spaziali). By slicing into the pictorial plane, he transformed the canvas from a site of illusion to a three-dimensional object: behind each cut resides a vast, unknowable, and unreachable expanse. ‘I do not want to make a painting,’ explained Fontana. ‘I want to open up space’ (L. Fontana, quoted in J. van der Marck and E. Crispolti, La Connaissance, Brussels 1974, p. 7).