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LUCIO FONTANA

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LUCIO FONTANA is the
revolution of space and time.

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LUCIO FONTANA LUCIO
FONTANA His name sounds Italian.

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In fact, LUCIO FONTANA is Argentinian
from Rosario

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He is the visionary artist who
changes the art of his time,

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the first to go beyond
the space of the canvas.

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So, first with the holes
and then with the cuts.

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So, the cuts of FONTANA,
at the end of the 1950s,

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have become his most famous
works, but also the most controversial.

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In fact, they are works of engineering,

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preserved in Italian and
international museums.

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And yet, for a long time, the cuts
have been considered the classic work

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in which the viewer can
come out the most banal,

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in the same, the most human of reactions.

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Did I know how to do this?

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It's not like that.

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If anyone of us tried to cut a canvas,
the canvas would be on its own.

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This simple technical data tells us,

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instead, how much FONTANA
was attentive and prejudiced,

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more than free, in
overcoming the limits of

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tradition, in paddling the
technique and technology,

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by folding it to the idea of
overcoming the bidimensional space.

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It also tells us that
when we face one of its

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cuts, we are in front of
something more complex,

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and therefore it would be
reductive to look at these works

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only for what they are
or for what they appear.

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FONTANA, those cuts,

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tell us much more about its
time, than we can imagine.

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So, let's see what the cuts
are, and how they are born.

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Here, one is representative
of its production,

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thanks to the FONTANA
light foundation.

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The artist performed it in 1962,

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but the genesis of the cut, of
the decisive and firm gesture,

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with which FONTANA laid the
canvas as a surgeon, is not sudden.

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The management of the
cuts comes from far away,

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from the historical formation
at the Brera Academy in Milan,

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as a traditional sculptor,
and from the awareness that

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the man of the 20th century,
technological and modern,

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is a man who lived and who has
memories of wars and exterminations,

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and therefore needs
new architectural spaces.

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With the Second World War, the tragic
epilogue of atomic bombs begins a new era,

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and after that of the
stone, of the fire and

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of the iron, the era
of space has arrived.

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FONTANA writes it the same,

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but the space era must
correspond to a space

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art, a symbol of a
space and of a new man.

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In fact, the cuts, or space
concepts, are also something more.

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They represent a time and a measure, and
the desire to think about an environment,

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whether it be the room,
the house or the museum,

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as an expression of an
empty space to live in,

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an environment that makes
itself a new architecture

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of ideas, a sort of part
of contemporary art,

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to still quote the words
of the same artist.

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A new concept of space, so the
cuts, would not be without, however,

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an unedited idea of this space, without
a thought that opens up to another.

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The traditional canvas, with its
classic measures of height and width,

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does not have depth, and
the cut spreads a universe

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beyond the flat canvas and
beyond time, to the fourth dimension.

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For this reason it would be reductive
to consider the cuts of FONTANA

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as simple accelerations,
they are works that

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bring us inside and beyond
geometric conventions.

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Already the avant-garde stories
that had overcome the conventions

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and broke the old scheme of
the Renaissance perspective,

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and these works of FONTANA open to
us the immense horizon of infinite space.

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How does all this happen?

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The gesture, its gesture,

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to bend the canvas, is
sudden, from martial art,

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it is a result of silence and
concentration, and it is part of the work.

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In no case will it be
photographed while it

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compiles this action,
because it is the action that

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counts, but also together,
especially at the moment

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in which the action will be performed
on which we have to pay our attention.

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It is

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a mental, conceptual operation,
and this would be enough

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to make LUCIO FONTANA an
anti-signal revolutionary artist.

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Not in the case of FONTANA,
he does not call these works cut,

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but spatial concepts,
and in front of him he

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himself told to try an
absolute sense of freedom.

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I sit in front of one of
my cuts to contemplate it,

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and try to improvise a
great extension of the spirit.

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I feel a man free from
the slavery of matter,

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a man who belongs to the
vastness of the present and the future.

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But FONTANA reaches the
cuts after having experimented.

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Already in 1949

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the first holes were born,
as an attempt to overcome

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the bidimensionality.

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I did not worry about a technique
because I was interested in the idea.

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Then I opened the canvas
and I did not think about

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opening a can, but the value
would have been the same.

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Do not think about RACAR
LA LONZI in a famous interview.

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After the holes, however, FONTANA
feels that the opening of the canvas

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can be even more
precise, more radical.

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The cut is no longer
a point, it is not a gap,

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but it is a line.

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It is born from a meditative,
yet a load of tension

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and the affirmation of the
space, of the new space.

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Let's try to imagine it now.

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The cut is made with a cut
in a precise movement that is

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not a simple laceration, but
a gap towards a real space,

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beyond the pictorial surface.

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The artist, to achieve this result,
prepares the telephoto with uniform colors

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and studies carefully the position
of each cut in a process that unites

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thought and action.

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But the most important and decisive

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is the preparatory moment,
the moment that precedes the cut

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and it is for this that FONTANA
anticipates some results of conceptual art.

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In the same way, the cut reveals
the space between reality and the void,

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between the known things
and those still to be discovered.

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It marks a border, the B-Dimensionality
to illuminate the light, the light,

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the cosmic space that is
beyond the surface of the matter

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and that we cannot see.

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With FONTANA's vision
FONTANA also anticipates

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the space race, the conquest of
the moon, the satelites of the TV

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on which the screen appears
to pass the real life and

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anticipates the era of the
computer and the network.

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However, these works are
too venerate and FONTANA will

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take a long time before being
understood and appreciated.

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It will be celebrated with a personal room
at the Biennale di Venezia only in 1966.

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He is 67 years old but has
the spirit of a young master.

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He exposes his spatial
concepts and chooses

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the white screen with
a single vertical cut.

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Carlo Scarpa, who knows how to
interpret his art, illuminates the works

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with white light and so FONTANA
wins the grand prize for the painting.

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He is only two years old

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after his death.

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He was a free man and
was generous to the young

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painters who supported
him by buying the works.

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He was a man who had the sense
of real life and who sometimes carried

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even in his works like when on the back
of the TV he noticed an extraordinary fact

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like someone playing the bell and
what happens while he is creating.

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FONTANA,

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artist of light and space

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was the protagonist of an
irrepeatable season of Italian art.

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At the time when the bulls were
burning FONTANA was cutting

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on their lapel

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it would have been removed

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and the bulls and FONTANA wanted to show
that a space and a new world were possible.

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To be continued...