Lot Essay
The current picture belongs to Fontana's rarest and most highly acclaimed series of Fine di Dio (End of God) paintings. The special appeal of these works is due in part to their dramatic formal presence and the fact that they encapsulate all of the artist's more complex philosophical innovations. Certainly they are Fontana's most developed statement about the nature of the universe and the crisis of post-war society, while simultaneously acting as a self-reflective commentary on the spiritual content of his own paintings.
The Fine di Dio series comprises 38 egg-shaped pictures of identical proportions, painted in different monochromatic colours and subjected to a diverse range of surface effects. Out of all the colours, pink is perhaps most consistent with the ideology behind the works. Its creamy fleshiness exudes a painful sexuality, made even more emphatic by the profusion of gaping holes that have been torn into the canvas. The effect is reminiscent of the oozing wounds of a Gothic Christ; conversely commentators have likened the countless perforations to volcanic craters erupting on the barren landscape of a world which God has long forsaken.
By 1963, the puncturing of the canvas had become the trade-mark technique by which Fontana succeeded in breaking through the inherent two-dimensionality of the picture surface to suggest a doorway to spacial infinity. He explained, "I do not want to make a painting; I want to open up space, create a new dimension for art, tie in at the cosmos, as it endlessly expands beyond the confining plane of the picture. With my innovation of the hole pierced through the canvas in repetitive formations, I have not attempted to decorate a surface, but, on the contrary, I have tried to break its dimensional limitations. Beyond the perforations, a newly gained freedom of interpretation awaits us, but also, and just as inevitably, the end of art." (in: Lucio Fontana Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis 1966).
This present work employs the most perfect shape in nature, an egg, as a universal symbol of birth and eternity, a notion further conveyed by its embryonic pinkness. Fontana then violates this perfection by ripping open the surface. In this way he represents the forces of life and death, creation and destruction, within one single image.
Fontana's pictures have generally been hailed for their inherent spirituality. It is true that the experience of viewing the elegant arc of his rasor-like cuts isolated against a picture plane of pure colour can be likened to contemplating a sacred icon. The Fine di Dio series makes conscious reference to this iconic potential, but its title clearly indicates that any religious enlightenment thereby gained has no relation to God. Like Nietzsche, Fontana proclaims God to be dead. We are now in the Space Age and he believed that man must look to science and technology for truth and the secrets of the cosmos.
The Fine di Dio series comprises 38 egg-shaped pictures of identical proportions, painted in different monochromatic colours and subjected to a diverse range of surface effects. Out of all the colours, pink is perhaps most consistent with the ideology behind the works. Its creamy fleshiness exudes a painful sexuality, made even more emphatic by the profusion of gaping holes that have been torn into the canvas. The effect is reminiscent of the oozing wounds of a Gothic Christ; conversely commentators have likened the countless perforations to volcanic craters erupting on the barren landscape of a world which God has long forsaken.
By 1963, the puncturing of the canvas had become the trade-mark technique by which Fontana succeeded in breaking through the inherent two-dimensionality of the picture surface to suggest a doorway to spacial infinity. He explained, "I do not want to make a painting; I want to open up space, create a new dimension for art, tie in at the cosmos, as it endlessly expands beyond the confining plane of the picture. With my innovation of the hole pierced through the canvas in repetitive formations, I have not attempted to decorate a surface, but, on the contrary, I have tried to break its dimensional limitations. Beyond the perforations, a newly gained freedom of interpretation awaits us, but also, and just as inevitably, the end of art." (in: Lucio Fontana Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis 1966).
This present work employs the most perfect shape in nature, an egg, as a universal symbol of birth and eternity, a notion further conveyed by its embryonic pinkness. Fontana then violates this perfection by ripping open the surface. In this way he represents the forces of life and death, creation and destruction, within one single image.
Fontana's pictures have generally been hailed for their inherent spirituality. It is true that the experience of viewing the elegant arc of his rasor-like cuts isolated against a picture plane of pure colour can be likened to contemplating a sacred icon. The Fine di Dio series makes conscious reference to this iconic potential, but its title clearly indicates that any religious enlightenment thereby gained has no relation to God. Like Nietzsche, Fontana proclaims God to be dead. We are now in the Space Age and he believed that man must look to science and technology for truth and the secrets of the cosmos.