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Lot Essay
With their musical progression across the surface of the canvas, the slashes in Fontana's Concetto spaziale, Attese are filled with the lyrical elegance of Spatialism. These cuts are neat and precise, almost surgical, and there is a harmonious aesthetic underlying their spacing on the canvas. These slashes are like a futuristic cuneiform, and Fontana has deliberately arranged them to read across the canvas. Appearing almost like letters, they have an iconic simplicity, and their sharp contrast with the red surface makes this appear like a poster celebrating Spatialism.
The sleek grace of the cuts in the Attese, as opposed to the rougher holes in some of Fontana's other Concetti spaziali, emphasise the artist's own gesture in creating this artwork. The actual movement, the application of the sharp blade to the canvas, is not an act of destruction, but an act of revelation. Fontana has unwrapped the world beyond the canvas. It is less the canvas of Concetto spaziale, Attese that he has created than the space within it. While the canvas will perish, this simple moment of opening the canvas will not. As the Second Spatial Manifesto made clear, Fontana and his colleagues intended 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' (The Second Spatial Manifesto, reproduced in E. Crispolti & R. Siligato (ed.), exh. cat., Lucio Fontana, Milan, 1998, p.118).
The sleek grace of the cuts in the Attese, as opposed to the rougher holes in some of Fontana's other Concetti spaziali, emphasise the artist's own gesture in creating this artwork. The actual movement, the application of the sharp blade to the canvas, is not an act of destruction, but an act of revelation. Fontana has unwrapped the world beyond the canvas. It is less the canvas of Concetto spaziale, Attese that he has created than the space within it. While the canvas will perish, this simple moment of opening the canvas will not. As the Second Spatial Manifesto made clear, Fontana and his colleagues intended 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' (The Second Spatial Manifesto, reproduced in E. Crispolti & R. Siligato (ed.), exh. cat., Lucio Fontana, Milan, 1998, p.118).