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Lot Essay
Executed in 1955, Concetto spaziale is from Fontana's so-called Pietri series. These works, which contain glass rather than the stones that their name implies, capture a graceful yet playful vision of the Spatialism that was of central concern to the artist. In Concetto spaziale, the dark surface thrusts the glass 'pebbles' into bold relief, their colours lent an extra visual force. This in turn heightens the tension between these glass elements and the holes that perforate other parts of the work.
Fontana had first begun experimenting with making holes in the picture-surface in 1949, forcing the viewer into a new perspective, lending us a vantage-point that allows us to see the picture in a way in which it was never previously seen: as a three-dimensional object. By applying these glass fragments to the surface, Fontana heightens this effect, bringing the picture further into the world of the viewer and further from its own planar origins. Just as he had sculpted in pure space by opening up the canvas and leaving small void areas, so too he sculpted in light by applying the coloured glass.
There is a lyrical poetry to the contrast between the holes, through which light passes only from the realm of the viewer, and the glistening glass. In astronomical terms, we are faced by an array of stars and of black holes, an interpretation of which Fontana, who was a believer in Space both with a large 'S' and with a small one, would have wholeheartedly approved.
Fontana had first begun experimenting with making holes in the picture-surface in 1949, forcing the viewer into a new perspective, lending us a vantage-point that allows us to see the picture in a way in which it was never previously seen: as a three-dimensional object. By applying these glass fragments to the surface, Fontana heightens this effect, bringing the picture further into the world of the viewer and further from its own planar origins. Just as he had sculpted in pure space by opening up the canvas and leaving small void areas, so too he sculpted in light by applying the coloured glass.
There is a lyrical poetry to the contrast between the holes, through which light passes only from the realm of the viewer, and the glistening glass. In astronomical terms, we are faced by an array of stars and of black holes, an interpretation of which Fontana, who was a believer in Space both with a large 'S' and with a small one, would have wholeheartedly approved.