Concetto spaziale, Natura

More than any of his other works, Fontana's Nature focus on materiality itself. Making a sheer face on a piece of clay and incising a wedge into it, the artist has created something raw and powerful. Concetto spaziale, Natura takes this a step further, having been enshrined in bronze, not the initial raw material. This adds a sense of seriousness to the work, as though the fact that what was initially a mere terracotta has been transformed is some kind of apotheosis, forcing the viewer to see how important the transformation of the initially shapeless lump is to the artist. Indeed, it is the very crux of this work. Here, Fontana has enacted Creation in a way that reminds us of the primordial ooze from which life itself sprung. The earthiness of the initial state has had the neat incision forced upon it, an outside act forced upon the material, a neat cut, the thrust of order. The sensual feel of the unmodelled parts of Concetto spaziale, Natura is increased by the incision. Photographs taken of Fontana creating the later Nature that were shaped as balls show the amount of exertion that their creation involved. Where his works on canvas often involved slashes and holes, here he has gouged the surface. He has not created a void in the same way, and yet has rent this tear in the very stuff of the artwork. There is something possessive and almost sexual about this penetration of the material as Fontana has forced himself into it, making his mark. While his slashes and punctures of canvases recorded a brief gesture, here he has managed to set his act in bronze, to lend it a further stay of its perishability, recording the eternal artistic act.