Concetto spaziale, Attese

At once creative and destructive, the motion of Fontana's slash provided the artist with an elegant solution to the problems that he considered faced art in the Post-War era. As early as 1946, the Manifesto Blanco written under Fontana's auspices, and which was a precursor of the Spatial Movement that he spearheaded, stated: 'We live in the mechanical age. Painted canvas and upright plaster no longer have a reason to exist' (B. Arias, H. Cazeneuve, M. Fridman, Manifesto Blanco, Buenos Aires, 1946). In Concetto spaziale, Attese, executed in 1964, the elegant slashes that perforate the red canvas-- in a series that is reminiscent of sheet music mark both the desecration of the canvas that the Manifesto Blanco had declared obsolete while also opening up a new dimension to the viewer.

In these deft movements, these gracious ballet-like slashes with a Stanley knife, Fontana has added a new perspective to our understanding of the painting. We are forced to appreciate its existence in a Spatial context, as a three-dimensional object, providing a similar vantage-point to that afforded to the first balloonists who managed to view their world from the air. In its calligraphic simplicity and in the contrast between the dark cuts and the vibrant red of the canvas, there is a clear and crisp aesthetic at work that points to Concetto spaziale, Attese's role as a poster for an age of science, for the era of the rocket.