WEBVTT

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How did you come up
with the idea of creating an

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image that is part of the
visual memory of an era?

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We said a while ago that the dream
of an artist is to create an image

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that is part of the
visual memory of an era.

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Well, someone made it, and among these,
of course, of course, of Lucho Fontana.

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Yes, because we all know
these cuts of Lucho Fontana,

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even if we sometimes know
them with a negative reception.

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That is, the cut of Fontana is the
stereotype of what I know how to do.

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A phrase that we have all
said, I know how to do it too.

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You can say, if I know
how to do it, because

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there is always this
subject that we are,

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where everything has to
depend on us, on our taste,

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while the subject of art history is
not the individual single, but art history.

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And then art history
has nothing to do with the

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difficulty, necessarily
with the difficulty.

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And Fontana says it, he
asks himself, but who said

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that to do art he really
needs to do difficult things?

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And who says he needs
to use traditional means?

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He says this, but he temporarily writes,

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I wanted to overcome
the figure, overcome the

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design, because the cut
is the overcoming of this.

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But to overcome this important, I
thought it was necessary for me,

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but first of all to know
these traditional forms.

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When I entered the Academy
of Fine Arts in Milan, in Brera,

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I wanted to give to my
research a classic base.

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I had a great teacher
for driving, Adolfo Wilt.

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I was considered the best
student, and Wilt, indeed,

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had expressed to me more times
that I became a continuator of his art.

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This is first the tradition,
and then the cut.

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So, so much true that
Fontana, in the 1930s,

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gave life to a series of works,
sculptures, extraordinary,

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that seem not even made by
what he then made the cuts.

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For example, if you look at
this Olympian champion of 1932,

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or, if you prefer, this
young lady sitting in 1934,

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or this filmmaker, always
from the same period,

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who was born as a sculpture for a
fountain in the market of fish in Milan.

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And so many, many others.

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Perhaps the one I absolutely
prefer is the angel of tomb Kinelli,

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who is in the Cimitero
Monumentale di Milano,

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and he is the head of
the sculpture of Fontana.

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So an artist of this level, of this talent,

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in 1946, adheres to the white manifesto.

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Adheres is not exactly the exact word,

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because the manifesto
was written to the

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students of the academy
that he had instituted.

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He could not sign it, because, of course,
he was the academy, but he fully shares it.

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In 1946, these boys wrote all the things

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born for necessity and
have value in their time,

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which seems to be the sentence of
Kandinsky, which we read the other time.

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Remember, every work
of art is the son of his time.

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They say the same thing, and then they add,

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we must abandon the
practice of the forms of art

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known to face the space of an art
based on the unity of time and space.

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Fontana is, in fact, the spatialism,

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the theoretical of spatialism.

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So much so that, in the
second manifesto of 1948,

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the sculpture and painting
are no longer conceived,

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or rather, I read, they no longer conceive,

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sculpture and painting,
but new ways of expression

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through the resources of modern technology.

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We do not intend to
abolish the art of the past,

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or to stop life.

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We want the painting
to come out of its corner.

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We also saw it in Pollo, which is
this desire to come out of the corner.

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Pollo, which I do with
the painting, they do not.

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Fontana does not.

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In the end, with the resources
of modern technology,

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we will appear in the
sky, artificial forms,

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marvellous arcobalans,
written and luminous,

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it seems to hear the
manifesto of futurists,

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the emphases, and then
there is a debut of recognition,

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obviously, in the
confrontations of futurism.

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In 1946, at the gallery
of the ship of Milan,

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Fontana makes his
first space environment.

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It is February 5, 1949.

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And what is this space environment?

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Well, it is certainly one of the fundamental
developments of contemporary art.

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I read to you.

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It presents abstract, organic
forms, elongated and colored,

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which weigh on the soft and
illuminated by the light of Vood.

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The dominant color, thanks to new
technologies, becomes pure space.

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The floating forms and the light
movement make the matter lose weight,

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and the man is deprived of the
traditional coordinated temporal space.

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Fontana leads, that is, to another space.

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Not a physical terrestrial, nor a moon,

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but to the appenderal
dimension of the man of the future,

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to the dimension of pure existence,

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which only the space of
creation can anticipate.

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It is the years, 1949, in which
Fontana makes his first holes,

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because before the cuts,
which will arrive a long time later,

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there are holes.

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And what are the holes?

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There is a canvas, like
the one you are looking at,

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with a paper on the canvas,
and Fontana says this.

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Here, the cuts, he says,

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my search beyond the
flat, to use the painting,

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towards a new dimension, space.

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A gesture of breakage

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beyond the limits imposed by the
habit, by the costume, by the tradition.

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But it is clear,

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matured in the honest
knowledge of the tradition, in the

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academic use of the scalpel
of the pencil, of the color.

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See that Fontana once
again, as for the rest of his life,

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they broke the soul and the holes and
the cuts, they did not take it seriously,

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he said, I do these, because
I know how to do the other.

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And then there is a nice anecdote
of this, he says, a long time ago,

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a surgeon came to see me in the
studio, he told me that those holes

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were very capable of doing them.

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He too, here we go back to the topic.

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I answered him that
a leg, I can cut it too,

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but I also know that
the patient then dies.

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If he cuts it, the facende
is different, very different.

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Here are the holes.

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But let's go on, in 1950,

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Fontana is called

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for this ban

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of the fifth door of the man of
Milan, where he presents himself

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with this work, but it is
discarded, of course it will be taken

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by Luciano Minguzzi.

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In 1951, so the year
after, there is another

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space environment for
the Triennale of Milan,

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the Triennale Nona, and Fontana presents
himself with this neon, 100 meters of neon,

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floating in space,

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which today is the Museum
of the 900th in Milan.

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The space environments of Fontana

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are from 49 to 66.

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They are exhibited in the great museums, in
the great exhibition spaces of the world,

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and after the exhibition
they are destroyed.

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This was it.

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And we arrive now in 1958

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to his first cuts.

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You can see that Fontana dies in 1968,

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so Italy embraces the last ten years of
his life, which then, in addition to Italy,

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has also done so.

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In these famous cuts by Lucio Fontana,

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he says, I am above all a
philosophical expression, says Fontana,

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an act of faith in the infinite,
an affirmation of spirituality.

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When I sit in front of one
of my cuts, contemplating it,

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I try to improvise a great
extension of the spirit.

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I feel a man freed from
the slavery of matter,

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a man who belongs to
the present and the future.

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This is what he says.

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The era in which Fontana

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is located, from the 40s to
the 40s, is the time of television.

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It is the time of the
images that travel in space.

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It is the time of the man who goes

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into space with the satellites, and
then, in 1966, he will go on the moon.

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The theme of space is a great
theme in the world, in general.

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And Fontana, therefore, warns this
climate, because everything we have read

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is placed in this climate.

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There are many,

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I advise you to read this
book, because here you find

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many writings written on it.

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Speaking of space art,

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he says, on space art there is an
equivocation seconded by few serious people.

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A statue with a hole in the
middle is not a spatial sculpture,

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it is just a statue with
a hole in the middle.

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I try to get out of the matter

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to reach the intelligence of the man.

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It is true that here he has
reported another anecdote.

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One day an American critic says to
him, but Fontana speaks of space.

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From us, in Arizona, in the United
States, there are infinite spaces.

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Fontana says, this has
not happened to anyone.

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Mine is not a physical space, it
is not that thing that interests me.

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Maybe the best way to end this brief encounter
with Fontana is to read what he writes

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on page 96, which
is very, very beautiful.

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When, for the first time,

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the man felt the desire
to paint, he did not

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have a brush or a
canvas at his disposal.

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The first painting would have
been a sign drawn on the sand.

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Then millennia later

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that sign was transformed into
a color game on a canvas, etc.

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I jump and conclude by saying

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I make these cuts,

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these concepts,

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I start something.

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Compared to the spatial era I am the
man who makes the sign on the sand.

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I made these
holes, but what is it?

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I am the mystery,

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the icon of art.

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I am waiting for
something to happen.