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Lot Essay
Fonseca was one of the original members of the Taller Torres-García, a workshop established in 1944 by the Uruguayan master Joaquín Torres-García as part of a broad program of modern arts education in Montevideo. A student of Torres-García from 1942 to 1949, Fonseca shared his teacher’s conception of an abstract art based on universal symbols. During this formative period, Fonseca assimilated the Constructivist tradition of abstraction with his study of pre-Hispanic ruins in Bolivia and Peru, later supplemented by travel to archaeological sites in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. “The principle of universality of abstract form that tied the artistic contribution of the Inca to that of the Egyptians or archaic Greeks implied the right of Latin Americans not only to participate in the legacy of universal civilizations, but also to make use of the conventions of these cultures in their art,” curator Mari Carmen Ramírez has explained of El Taller’s philosophy. The identification of an abstract vocabulary based on pre-Columbian referents in the work of Fonseca and other El Taller alumni, including Francisco Matto, Julio Alpuy, and José Gurvich, would come to signify their connection to a shared, organic past that “touched upon the universal human essence and at the same time restored to art its symbolic function” (“Re-positioning the South: The Legacy of El Taller Torres-García in Contemporary Latin American Art,” El Taller Torres-García: The School of the South and its Legacy, exh. cat., The Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, Austin, 1992, p. 257, 261).
Fonseca’s interest in what Ramírez has called a “myth of origins” intensified upon his arrival in New York in 1957. The recovery of pre-Columbian sources in sculpture, to which Fonseca devoted himself exclusively after 1964, developed through his exploration of architectonic space in the cavities of found pieces of stone, whose built surfaces recall the hybrid escultoarquitecturas of ancient civilizations. The discrete world of his small-scale stone sculptures, such as the present Untitled, evokes the ruins of a remote, prehistoric past through labyrinthine forms and doors and windows that contain strange, abstracted shapes. “Their structure represents a hybrid fusion of forms and elements from the monumental art of ancient civilizations,” Ramírez observes, but their classicizing aesthetic also points to secondary sources in classical and Renaissance traditions of carved sculpture. During his New York years, Fonseca split his time between Manhattan and his studio in Italy, where he worked on pieces of stone found in an abandoned marble quarry. “In describing the creative process involved in the production of his sculptures, Fonseca speaks of how the stone itself suggests the theme and the artist only uncovers what is already there,” Ramírez notes. “His procedure demands long periods of studying the inherent qualities of the material, ‘living within the stone’ in order to determine what he may alter or what he may add. In spite of the fact that he carves directly into the stone block, he ends by consciously removing the evidence of his hand from the creative process and thus achieving for the work the overall effect of a self-contained unit or microcosm that has survived from a remote past” (ibid., pp. 264-65).
This dialogue between the prehistoric origins of civilization and the classical and modern languages of sculpture is sustained across the cubic cut-outs that shape the surface of Untitled. Fonseca respects the integrity of the pink marble, left largely in its natural state and only partially worked; volumes jut outward and upward and are even suspended in space, the objects and niches thoughtfully integrated within the architectural whole. Timeless and suggestively surreal, Untitled conveys an oneiric monumentality that belies its size, gesturing both to universal mythos and to postmodern fictions. “They are microscopic worlds to explore, which—like the moon from orbit, a snowflake under magnification, or the Pantheon in plan—inspire wonder because they are at once familiar, fundamental, and alien,” wrote curator Dakin Hart on the occasion of Fonseca’s recent exhibition at the Noguchi Museum. “Swiftian microcosms in stone,” these architectonic sculptures “constitute not just a catalogue of building blocks but a concrete essay on man” (Gonzalo Fonseca: Four Sculptures, exh. cat., The Isamu Noguchi Museum, New York, 2017, p. 43, 45).
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
Fonseca’s interest in what Ramírez has called a “myth of origins” intensified upon his arrival in New York in 1957. The recovery of pre-Columbian sources in sculpture, to which Fonseca devoted himself exclusively after 1964, developed through his exploration of architectonic space in the cavities of found pieces of stone, whose built surfaces recall the hybrid escultoarquitecturas of ancient civilizations. The discrete world of his small-scale stone sculptures, such as the present Untitled, evokes the ruins of a remote, prehistoric past through labyrinthine forms and doors and windows that contain strange, abstracted shapes. “Their structure represents a hybrid fusion of forms and elements from the monumental art of ancient civilizations,” Ramírez observes, but their classicizing aesthetic also points to secondary sources in classical and Renaissance traditions of carved sculpture. During his New York years, Fonseca split his time between Manhattan and his studio in Italy, where he worked on pieces of stone found in an abandoned marble quarry. “In describing the creative process involved in the production of his sculptures, Fonseca speaks of how the stone itself suggests the theme and the artist only uncovers what is already there,” Ramírez notes. “His procedure demands long periods of studying the inherent qualities of the material, ‘living within the stone’ in order to determine what he may alter or what he may add. In spite of the fact that he carves directly into the stone block, he ends by consciously removing the evidence of his hand from the creative process and thus achieving for the work the overall effect of a self-contained unit or microcosm that has survived from a remote past” (ibid., pp. 264-65).
This dialogue between the prehistoric origins of civilization and the classical and modern languages of sculpture is sustained across the cubic cut-outs that shape the surface of Untitled. Fonseca respects the integrity of the pink marble, left largely in its natural state and only partially worked; volumes jut outward and upward and are even suspended in space, the objects and niches thoughtfully integrated within the architectural whole. Timeless and suggestively surreal, Untitled conveys an oneiric monumentality that belies its size, gesturing both to universal mythos and to postmodern fictions. “They are microscopic worlds to explore, which—like the moon from orbit, a snowflake under magnification, or the Pantheon in plan—inspire wonder because they are at once familiar, fundamental, and alien,” wrote curator Dakin Hart on the occasion of Fonseca’s recent exhibition at the Noguchi Museum. “Swiftian microcosms in stone,” these architectonic sculptures “constitute not just a catalogue of building blocks but a concrete essay on man” (Gonzalo Fonseca: Four Sculptures, exh. cat., The Isamu Noguchi Museum, New York, 2017, p. 43, 45).
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park