Interview with Lucio Fontana by Bruno Rossi

The Conversion to Non-Figurative Art

Against non-figurative artists, taken as a whole, an accusation is on the lips of much of the public. Or at least a suspicion. People don't give much credit, that is, to the sincerity of those who are authors and of those who claim to be admirers of these works. If anything, they think they understand the dealer; and the reason is simple: there is the conviction that it is a somewhat crazy game, built on a misunderstanding, and a source of easy as well as very high profits. It is a very old and tiresome polemic, and in large part naive, agreed. However, a more specific accusation has been made against you. A few months ago it was written that only recently you "converted" to non-figurative art, evidently implying that you embraced the new faith only when you realized that by doing so your stock would rise considerably, as it indeed has.

It is an absolutely unfounded accusation. It may be leveled at many other Italian painters. Certainly not at me. Because it was in 1931 that I began to make abstract art.¹ I did not convert at all. I have always sought a new structure. I have been searching for it since the years I attended the Academy. Indeed, I followed the courses at Brera precisely to give a solid foundation to my research.

Relations with the Academy and Adolfo Wildt

Were your relations with the professors of the Academy polemical?

No, on the contrary. I did want, yes, to go beyond the figure, to go beyond drawing. But, in order to go beyond them, I believed it was necessary for me first of all to know these traditional forms thoroughly. When I entered the Academy I was no longer very young, I was twenty-seven years old. I could very well have remained a self-taught painter or sculptor. But precisely because I seriously felt the desire to find a radically new path I wanted to give my research a classical foundation. I had as a guide a great master, Wildt. Well, I believe I took possession of his art. So much so that I was considered the best student of the course. And Wildt, indeed, had expressed to me several times the hope that I would become the continuator of his art...

And instead...

Instead, as soon as I left the Academy, I took a mass of plaster, gave it the approximately figurative structure of a seated man and threw tar on it.² Like that, as a violent reaction. Wildt, naturally, was quite upset. He came to me, he complained: «you were all my hope» he told me «and you betray me like this». What could I tell him? I had great esteem for him, I was grateful to him, but I was interested in finding a new path, a path that was all my own.

The Years of Figurative Art

However, for many years, you continued to work in a figurative sense.

For a certain time I made a coloured sculpture, which is improperly called baroque. I wanted to bring light into sculpture. In short, I was searching for a new dimension. And this restlessness continued even in the years, between '39 and '46, lived in South America.³ My sculpture of those years was certainly figurative, human. Partly because it was the only way I could earn a living and partly because my research had not yet led me to the discovery of my path.

The Birth of the Holes

Returning to the accusation I mentioned earlier, I believe there may be another argument in your defense. The birth of your «holes» can be dated around 1946.⁴ But these holes only began to generate money recently: for many years you gained from them, I believe, only condescending smiles.

Of course, I followed my research even when I was a poor devil. Practically it has been only two years, or a little more, that I have been selling my paintings at high prices. I had to reach sixty years of age. I cannot therefore say that my paintings have made my life more comfortable. I had to work as a house painter, I had to do all kinds of jobs. Because nobody believed in my holes, in my slashes. Fontana is making fun of people, they said. It took great strength, the will to believe and to endure. You know, I continually heard people say: «Eh, el fa i büs lü. El fa i taj». I tried to laugh it off, but inside I felt myself boiling, I felt a desperate rebellion. You see well, therefore, that I did not convert to non-figurative art to make money.

The New Dimension: Time-Space

For years you have searched for a new dimension. How do you believe you have achieved it?

I believe I have created a new dimension by shattering, breaking the canvases, with these holes, these slashes. A dimension that is not pictorial, but philosophical. On the plane there existed the dimensions of base, height, depth. But today man is conquering space and the artist, who more than anyone else lives and feels the spirit of his time, cannot remain insensitive, alien to this human event of enormous importance. He realizes among other things that those dimensions no longer make sense in space. In short, the fourth dimension that I have tried to bring into my works is time-space, that is, nothingness, the infinite, the discovery of nothing.

Fear and Discovery

Your break with tradition has been among the most radical of these years. When, for the first time, you thought of bringing this new dimension into one of your paintings, breaking the canvas, were you sustained by the certainty of being on the right path or were you rather tormented by doubts?

I had, for a certain moment, doubts, a sort of fear, I would say. But in the emotion of what I was discovering, fear was only one of the components.

An emotion, therefore, also joyful. Now, years after your first work, let's say, spatial, now that even the critics have noticed your paintings, have accepted them, have applauded them, now, therefore, before a clean canvas, a new painting you have to make, do you feel the same sensations as those moments of research and discovery?

No, certainly not. But, you see?, I sometimes think one thing. If I had died before finding, inventing these holes (let's call them that, but I define them as concepts), I have the impression that I would have lived for nothing. With the discovery of these spatial concepts I have the feeling of having achieved something, I don't know if right or wrong, something however that has given me tranquillity. It is a bit like the reasoning of someone who says to himself: now I have brought a child into the world, I have created a fortune, I can die peacefully. Naturally, man cannot continue to discover forever.

Variations and Continuous Research

Can I ask you the question in another way? With regard to figurative painting, one has the impression that each painting is born from a different intuition. Before certain series of your paintings one rather thinks of many variations of a single intuition.

I do not believe there are substantial differences in this regard, between figurative and non-figurative painting. And besides, it is not even true, after all, that I do not continue to search for new forms. You see? In the latest paintings there is, how shall I say?, a physical space, the man-space relationship. Man has set out to conquer space, but he is only at the beginning and before the infinite he feels bewildered, lost. Man is afraid of space, he feels a physical pain from it. And so here is this tragedy, this restlessness in an almost unpleasant colour, which bothers, black, red, one does not know what it is, and in these graffiti that recall human forms and in these increasingly violent tears.

The Pure Intelligence of Man

Do you think of the man-space relationship as a relationship of discomfort?

No. Discomfort is accidental, linked to history. Many artists today put the emphasis on the representation of fear, of the human condition of misery, of insecurity, of nightmare. The fear of death, of the atomic bomb, is their principal philosophical category. I am instead more interested in the pure intelligence of man.

The Future of Abstract Art

There is much talk today of the exhaustion of abstractionism, it is said that abstractionism is creaking and under this denomination undoubtedly all non-figurative painting is lumped together. Do you believe that modern art has been an adventure and that this adventure is about to end miserably?

One cannot think of non-figurative painting as a parenthesis opened fifty, sixty years ago, and now about to close, but rather as a step of a ladder that serves to climb, to go forward. Today's painting will pass, naturally. But it will not be replaced with a return to traditional painting. It is absurd to think so. Even the fact that painters today are an avalanche means nothing. There are more painters because the population is greater and the possibilities are broader. But even in past centuries there were many painters. Time then made a selection, as it will among today's painters. How many will have painted in the fourteenth century? There must have been an infinity. But today you give me five, ten, twenty names. And the cubists, and the futurists? There were thousands. And yet, the majority has already disappeared. Look what I tell you: in a year or two we will no longer hear about the «new figuration», only a few names will remain.

The Imitators

You arrived at this form of painting after much research, after solid studies at the Academy. Today many young people imitate your works, without needing an onerous preparation. As you rightly say, the phenomenon of imitators is not exclusive to our days. However, one may have the suspicion that many are encouraged in this sense by the fact that imitating you or other non-figurative authors is or may seem relatively easier than imitating figurative painters.

It is possible that this is truly so. Well, one must accept this fact. One cannot deny anything of what is current. Who says that to make art one must precisely make «difficult things»? And who says that one must use traditional means? When, for the first time, man felt the desire to paint he certainly did not have a brush or a canvas at his disposal. Nor a piano or a violin when he desired to make music for the first time. The first fact of painting must have been a sign traced on sand. Millennia after that sign was transformed into a play of colours on a canvas. But in the future even the colours on canvas will disappear, they will be things of the past, consigned to history and now closed to life. Tomorrow art may end. Indeed I believe that the art of the painting will end. Because in the new dimensions in which man will live, in the spatial dimensions, art, as it is conceived today, will seem, by force of circumstances, too primitive, too inadequate, too ridiculous. The art of the painting is not a necessity of man, like eating or sleeping. In his history, man has lived millennia without painting. At a certain moment he created the painting. Well, tomorrow he will repudiate it, he will not know what to do with it, he will replace it with something else. And so, you see well, the fact that a painting is easy or difficult to imitate matters little.

The Art of the Future

I believe one can draw, among many, a somewhat, let's say, bold conclusion. That is, you think that today studies at the Academy are not so necessary after all. Is that true?

Certainly. The Academy was necessary for us who made this passage, this revolution. For us it gave a necessary starting base. But I believe that a young person may also no longer need the Academy. In the future there will no longer be art as it is still conceived today. I don't know, colours will be projected into the sky, forms. To think, for example, of oil painting in the world of tomorrow is too ridiculous. And just as for painting and sculpture, one can also say for architecture. Think when there will be the great space stations. But can you imagine if the men of the future will build columns with capitals there? Or if they will call painters to paint? But to paint what? No, art, as it is thought of today, will end. There will be something else. We cannot know today what. I make these slashes, these concepts. I begin a thing. Compared to the space age, I am the man who makes the sign on the sand. I have made these holes. But what are they? They are the mystery, the unknown of art, they are the expectation of something that must happen.