Materials: Bronze, terracotta, ceramic, plaster, cement, aluminum
First Biennale participation: XVII Venice Biennale, 1930
Lucio Fontana's artistic career began with the learning and practice of sculptural art. It was precisely in this discipline that he graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in 1930, under the guidance of Adolfo Wildt. At his first participation in the Venice Biennale (the XVII, in 1930) he presented two sculptures.
That first Venetian participation was not, however, a commercial success: archive documents from the Biennale show that Fontana put "Eva" and "Vittoria fascista" up for sale at heavily discounted prices, as evidenced by a handwritten letter from him to the organization's secretariat dated "Milano 20 giugno VIII" — but the works found no buyers. Another episode reveals how difficult the relationship was between the young sculptor and the institutions of the time: in 1936, the large "Vittoria" (Victory), a plaster sculpture five meters tall presented at the VI Milan Triennale, was destroyed because the Ministry of National Education did not purchase it. The inspector in charge of acquisitions, Giulio Carlo Argan — who would become one of the most important Italian art historians of the twentieth century — had a budget of 30,000 lire but declared that he had found "nothing of interest" at the Triennale that year.
All of Fontana's production is characterized by the creation of works in terracotta, plaster, cement, bronze, aluminum. Even during the decade 1958—1968, marked by the works that would make him famous, the Italian-Argentine master never stopped expressing himself through three-dimensionality.
Fontana's sculptural training, acquired at Brera, is a fundamental element for understanding his artistic research. Even before the "Holes" and the "Slashes," he developed a plastic approach that would influence all his production. His mastery of traditional techniques allowed him to manipulate different materials with extreme expressive freedom, creating works in which matter assumes a central role.
An example is the series of ceramics created in Albissola, where the encounter with matter and fire reveals his plastic vocation. Already from the late 1930s, Fontana exhibited his works in various contexts, obtaining prestigious recognition and commissions. His early sculptural activity remained for him a constant reference: in his later works, the three-dimensional vision transformed into radical gestures on canvas, but maintained the deep connection with the plasticity that defines his poetics.
Among the most significant works are sculptures in cement and bronze from the 1950s, with elongated and sharp forms that foreshadow the concept of space. Some works in plaster and terracotta show an almost pictorial attention to color, anticipating the fusion between painting and sculpture in the perforated and painted canvases.
These experimentations underscore how Fontana, though famous for his interventions on canvases, never abandoned the original language of sculpture.
Even today, his three-dimensional creations are preserved in important museum collections such as the Museo del Novecento in Milan and the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. The journey that begins with academic sculpture and culminates in Spatialist inventions represents the most authentic testimony of an artist who redefined the boundaries between the arts.
