Lot Essay
The painted metal Concetto Spaziale, one of the largest in Fontana's rare series of Scultura Spaziale executed in 1957-58, calls to mind images and forms from the vegetable kingdom, while at the same time being completely abstract. Smaller examples from the series can be found in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Kunstmuseum in Silkeborg. Of the eight sculptures in the series, the present work is the most complex, with two long stems growing out of the base to culminate in large, leaf-like forms. "The love of nature compels us to copy its behaviour," Fontana once said. (Quoted in: Lucio Fontana, G. Ballo, Cologne 1971, p. 249). The artist "organically" arranged several of the works from this series between the various plants of his own garden.
For Fontana, these works have a distinctly baroque characteristic and he frequently classifed them under the general term "Barocchi". Unlike the organic forms of the Sculture Astratte from 1934, the surfaces of which were covered with incised drawings, the Sculture Spaziali are perforated, similar to the series of Buchi (holes). With these perforations, Fontana attempted to create a connection between surface and space by literally opening up the surfaces. Thus, it becomes clear that the perforations, and later the Tagli (cuts), were not so much an act of destruction, but rather much more signs of optimism, of the possibility of perceiving the mysteries of the universe.
Executed in 1957, the same year in which Yves Klein presented his first exhibition of blue monochrome paintings in the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan, it is difficult to overlook the influence that the French artist ultimately exerted on his Italian colleague, and vice versa. Fontana, in fact, purchased one of the paintings from this exhibition. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to say that Fontana was inspired by Klein; rather, he felt a kind of reaffirmation of his own spatial concepts and preoccupation with monochrome painting as an expression of boundless space.
Until about 1948, Fontana worked almost exclusively as a sculptor, and his entire oeuvre should indeed be seen in this light. From the very beginning, his work was informed by an exploration of spatial relationships and the interplay of space and surface. It is for this reason that Fontana called even his paintings Concetti Spaziali or Spatial Conceptions. "This term indicated what Fontana meant to express through his novel pictorial form and what, ultimately, he attempted to realize through his knifed works. All his paintings since 1948 relate to his search for the third dimension - for a concrete rendering of space through appropriate imagery. (...) No longer content to project space as illusion or trompe l'oeil, Fontana meant to introduce it into the picture as a fact. As he breaks into the canvas he no longer paints space but creates it." (Erika Billeter in: Lucio Fontana 1899-1968: A Retrospective, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1977, p. 16).
For Fontana, these works have a distinctly baroque characteristic and he frequently classifed them under the general term "Barocchi". Unlike the organic forms of the Sculture Astratte from 1934, the surfaces of which were covered with incised drawings, the Sculture Spaziali are perforated, similar to the series of Buchi (holes). With these perforations, Fontana attempted to create a connection between surface and space by literally opening up the surfaces. Thus, it becomes clear that the perforations, and later the Tagli (cuts), were not so much an act of destruction, but rather much more signs of optimism, of the possibility of perceiving the mysteries of the universe.
Executed in 1957, the same year in which Yves Klein presented his first exhibition of blue monochrome paintings in the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan, it is difficult to overlook the influence that the French artist ultimately exerted on his Italian colleague, and vice versa. Fontana, in fact, purchased one of the paintings from this exhibition. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to say that Fontana was inspired by Klein; rather, he felt a kind of reaffirmation of his own spatial concepts and preoccupation with monochrome painting as an expression of boundless space.
Until about 1948, Fontana worked almost exclusively as a sculptor, and his entire oeuvre should indeed be seen in this light. From the very beginning, his work was informed by an exploration of spatial relationships and the interplay of space and surface. It is for this reason that Fontana called even his paintings Concetti Spaziali or Spatial Conceptions. "This term indicated what Fontana meant to express through his novel pictorial form and what, ultimately, he attempted to realize through his knifed works. All his paintings since 1948 relate to his search for the third dimension - for a concrete rendering of space through appropriate imagery. (...) No longer content to project space as illusion or trompe l'oeil, Fontana meant to introduce it into the picture as a fact. As he breaks into the canvas he no longer paints space but creates it." (Erika Billeter in: Lucio Fontana 1899-1968: A Retrospective, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1977, p. 16).