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Lot Essay
The present work is recorded in the Archivio Lucio Fontana under the temporary archive no. 1785/66.
'Art is eternal, but it cannot be immortal.
'It is eternal in that a gesture of art, like any other complete gesture, cannot fail to remain in the spirit of man as a perpetuated race. Thus paganism, Christianity, and every other manifestation of the spirit, are complete, eternal gestures that remain and will remain forever in the spirit of man. But being eternal does not mean that it is immortal. It might live one year or a thousand years, but the time of its material destruction will always come. It will remain eternal as a gesture, but it will die as matter. Now, we have come to the conclusion that up to now artists, whether knowingly or unknowingly, have always confused the terms eternity and immortality, consequently seeking in every art the material most suited to making it last longest; they were therefore victims, knowingly or unknowingly, of matter, they have made the pure, eternal gesture decay into a lasting gesture in the impossible hope of immortality. We plan to separate art from matter, to separate the sense of the eternal from the concern with the immortal. And it doesn't matter to us if a gesture, once accomplished, lives for a second or a millennium, for we are convinced that, having accomplished it, it is eternal' (from First spatial manifesto, signed by Fontana, G. Kaisserlian, B. Joppolo, M. Milani, Milan, [Dec.] 1947, reproduced in E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Milan 1998, pp.117-18).
'Art is eternal, but it cannot be immortal.
'It is eternal in that a gesture of art, like any other complete gesture, cannot fail to remain in the spirit of man as a perpetuated race. Thus paganism, Christianity, and every other manifestation of the spirit, are complete, eternal gestures that remain and will remain forever in the spirit of man. But being eternal does not mean that it is immortal. It might live one year or a thousand years, but the time of its material destruction will always come. It will remain eternal as a gesture, but it will die as matter. Now, we have come to the conclusion that up to now artists, whether knowingly or unknowingly, have always confused the terms eternity and immortality, consequently seeking in every art the material most suited to making it last longest; they were therefore victims, knowingly or unknowingly, of matter, they have made the pure, eternal gesture decay into a lasting gesture in the impossible hope of immortality. We plan to separate art from matter, to separate the sense of the eternal from the concern with the immortal. And it doesn't matter to us if a gesture, once accomplished, lives for a second or a millennium, for we are convinced that, having accomplished it, it is eternal' (from First spatial manifesto, signed by Fontana, G. Kaisserlian, B. Joppolo, M. Milani, Milan, [Dec.] 1947, reproduced in E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Milan 1998, pp.117-18).