1922
After the death of his brother Delfo, which occurred in 1920, he moved with his family to Argentina. Here he led an adventurous life as a gaucho on the ranches and devoted himself for a period to the trade of Italian marbles, before abandoning this activity to collaborate with the family business.
1924
He participated in a competition for the creation of a commemorative relief dedicated to Louis Pasteur for the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral.
Meanwhile, he entered as a partner in the new firm "Fontana, Scarabelli, Cauterio y Cia" in Rosario, assuming an active role after his father's retirement. During the same period, he opened a studio with the painter Julio Vanzo.
1925
1926
He obtained an award at the I Salon de Artistas Rosarinos for the "Portrait of Juan Zocchi", made in patinated plaster. He won the competition for a commemorative sculpture dedicated to the educator Juana Elena Blanco, destined for the cemetery of El Salvador.
During this period, he worked mainly with plasters, some of which he translated into bronze. His artistic production is influenced by figures such as Maillol, Archipenko and Zadkine, who characterize his plastic style until the 1930s.
1927
At the end of the same academic year he was promoted directly to the fourth class for the year 1928-1929.
1928
He began to exhibit in trade union exhibitions. He moved to a studio-apartment at via General Giuseppe Govone 27 and collaborated on the creation of a Madonna for a funeral commission entrusted to his cousin, the architect Bruno Fontana.
1929
He created funeral bas-reliefs for the Monumental Cemetery of Milan. He participated in the II Mostra del Sindacato Regionale Fascista Belle Arti di Lombardia with the work "Dormiente", judged by Edoardo Persico as representative of the "purest Novecento style".
He also exhibited at the Exposición Internacional de Barcelona with "Testa di ragazza", which received a mention. During the same period, thanks to Fausto Melotti, he came into contact with the group of young Milanese rationalist architects.
1930
He completed his sculpture studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, presenting the Wildtian work "El auriga".
At the end of the year, he exhibited in the collective exhibition Studi di artisti lombardi noti e giovanissimi at the Galleria il Milione, where he presented the provocative "Uomo nero", a plaster covered with tar, which was criticized by Wildt for its expressionist primitivism.
He moved to the new studio-house on via Edmondo De Amicis and met Teresita Rasini, whom he would marry in 1952.
The decisive influence of Adolfo Wildt
The relationship with Adolfo Wildt, holder of the chair of Plastic Arts and Figure at the Accademia di Brera, was decisive for Fontana's training. Wildt had structured a course in technical marble work with complete didactic freedom, teaching twenty-five hours per week.
Wildt's teaching
Wildt's teaching was based on principles that were revolutionary for the time:
- "Artist and craftsman must walk indivisibly": absolute respect for the craft
- Sculpture as material dissolution: means to achieve abstraction
- The value of the surface: anticipation of Fontana's research on two-dimensionality
- The spirituality of matter: the work as liberation of the spirit
From his association with Wildt, Fontana absorbed the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) of Wagnerian memory, also central to the Bauhaus of the time. The master was a profound connoisseur of ancient sculpture, from Pontormo to Michelangelo, and had studied the friezes of the Pergamon altar, with their compositional richness and almost Dionysian frenzy.
The decorative linearity and the surface tension that would characterize Fontana, together with the use of gold—which he would also take up in his last End of God—come directly from Wildt. Gold becomes in both the most immaterial of substances and the vehicle of the most spiritual of all senses.
