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Lot Essay
A cluster of holes, like craters, dominates the centre of Concetto spaziale, executed in 1962. It is a work that perfectly combines various idioms of Fontana's art with the Spatialism so central to his Post-War artistic production. While on the one hand the punctures breach the two dimensions of the canvas, making this more than a mere painting, implying some existence in a plane from which painting was formerly excluded, there is also a sense of the moonscape in these holes. They are not mere openings, portals to the infinite possibilities of art that Fontana had revealed to the world by piercing his support, they are also tiny landscapes in themselves. They are three dimensional not only as holes, but also with their encrusted lips, which jut from the surface and into the world of the viewer. Meanwhile, the outlines that have been indented into the paint forming some form of perimeter appear map-like, as though they represent the outlines of the moon itself.
While Fontana's output had, since the publication of the Manifesto blanco in Argentina almost twenty years earlier, been concerned with the future, with gestures and with opening new dimensions to the possibilities of art in the modern age, it was the Space Age that truly made an impact on the artist. Suddenly, the developments that Fontana had been exploring in his art were being mirrored by the space programmes of the East and the West. Only a year before Concetto spaziale was created, Yuri Gagarin had become the first man in space. While there, he had commented that 'The Earth is blue'. While the modern viewer takes this information for granted, in 1961 it marked the first moment that a person was able to look at the Earth from above. Fontana's Concetto spaziale appears like a moonscape, and yet at the same time it represents humanity's long sought-after target of achieving a completely new dimension, of seeing the Earth, not merely the land (as from an aeroplane), from above, from a distance. 'The discovery of the cosmos is a new dimension,' Fontana said. 'It is infinity, so I make a hole in this canvas, which was at the basis of all the arts and I have created an infinite dimension... the idea is precisely that, it is a new dimension corresponding to the cosmos' (quoted in E. Crispolti, 'Spatialism and Informel. The Fifties', pp. 144-150 in E. Crispolti & R. Siligato, Lucio Fontana, exh.cat., Milan, 1998, p. 146). Man had never left the atmosphere before, and this achievement marked the beginning of an era of infinite potential. Suddenly the cosmos was opened as a new dimension to humanity. In Concetto spaziale, Fontana has represented the achievement of this new perspective both through the holes, and through the outlines. This is a call to arms to the viewer, an invocation to consider angles and possibilities of existence never before considered.
While Fontana's output had, since the publication of the Manifesto blanco in Argentina almost twenty years earlier, been concerned with the future, with gestures and with opening new dimensions to the possibilities of art in the modern age, it was the Space Age that truly made an impact on the artist. Suddenly, the developments that Fontana had been exploring in his art were being mirrored by the space programmes of the East and the West. Only a year before Concetto spaziale was created, Yuri Gagarin had become the first man in space. While there, he had commented that 'The Earth is blue'. While the modern viewer takes this information for granted, in 1961 it marked the first moment that a person was able to look at the Earth from above. Fontana's Concetto spaziale appears like a moonscape, and yet at the same time it represents humanity's long sought-after target of achieving a completely new dimension, of seeing the Earth, not merely the land (as from an aeroplane), from above, from a distance. 'The discovery of the cosmos is a new dimension,' Fontana said. 'It is infinity, so I make a hole in this canvas, which was at the basis of all the arts and I have created an infinite dimension... the idea is precisely that, it is a new dimension corresponding to the cosmos' (quoted in E. Crispolti, 'Spatialism and Informel. The Fifties', pp. 144-150 in E. Crispolti & R. Siligato, Lucio Fontana, exh.cat., Milan, 1998, p. 146). Man had never left the atmosphere before, and this achievement marked the beginning of an era of infinite potential. Suddenly the cosmos was opened as a new dimension to humanity. In Concetto spaziale, Fontana has represented the achievement of this new perspective both through the holes, and through the outlines. This is a call to arms to the viewer, an invocation to consider angles and possibilities of existence never before considered.