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Lucio Fontana

"All things fall by necessity and bring about the requiremants of our time."

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Notes of biography

Lucio Fontana was born in 1899 in Rosario de Santa Fe (Argentina). His father was Italian. From 1914 to 1917, he studied to the School of the building in Milan. In 1917, he joined up the army. Injured, he was reformed in 1918. At the end of the war, he followed art studies to the Academy of Brera in Milan. In Argentina where he settled for few years, he created his first sculptures.
He came back to Italy (Milan) in 1928. Fontana went into all the aspects of the matter to create a purified art. Two years later, he was a cofounder of the abstract-art-Italian-artist group. His first personal exhibition was organized in 1930. From 1939 to 1945, he took refuge in Buenos Aires and used the art to react against the war.
In the post war period it was the flowering of his art. With a final gesture, Fontana scratched, perforated, bored through and even slashed the space of the fabric or paper. In 1946, he wrote the “white Manifesto” which announced the end of the painted fabric and the coming of a mobile and dynamic art, at the same time a change in the content and the form.
He returned to Milan in 1947 and published the “space manifesto”. At the end of the Forties, Lucio Fontana set neon-arabesques-compositions in places. He wanted to create a “space environment”. The artist announced the end of art, painted interstellar abstractions, carried out monochromes. Later, and in order to “open space”, he bored through his canvases or slit them with a blow of knife. In the 60’s Fontana painted or carved with simplier forms as he did before.
Lucio Fontana died in 1968 in Varèse (Italy).

Artists on display

The art and the artists display: proclamations, galleries, museums, personal or collective exhibitions. On walls or in shop windows, wise or rebels, posters warn, argue, show. Some were specially conceived by an artist for such or such event, other, colder, have only the letter.

Some were created in lithographic technic, most are simple offset reproductions. They are many those who like collecting these rectangles of paper, monochrome or in games of colours, in matt paper or brilliant, with many words or almost dumb.

We are happy also to be able to greet, by this pages, mythical galleries as those of Denise René, Louis Carré, Claude Bernard, Berheim Jeune, Maeght, Pierre Loeb and others.

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Complete work(s)

Complete work(s)
*« Lucio Fontana : les peintures, sculptures et environnements spaciaux », 2 Vol., E. Cripoliti & J. Van der Marck, Ed. La Connaissance, Bruxelles, 1974 et 1986 All the complete works

Bibliographic track and more

To read about the artist :
  • « Lucio Fontana », MNAM, Paris, 1987
  • « L. F. : une vie d’artiste », G. Joppolo, Images en Manoeuvres, Marseille, 1992
  • « Lucio Fontana : entre materia y espacio », Fondation « La Caixa », 1998
  • « Centenario de Lucio Fontana », Charta, Milan, 1999
  • « Fontana », Barbara Hess, Petite collection Art, Ed. Taschen, 2006
  • « Fontana e Parigi », Enrico Crispolti, Tomabuoni Art Ed. Forma, 2012
  • « L. F. - Rétrospective », coll., cat., MAM de la ville de Paris, Ed. Paris Musées, 2014
  • « Lucio Fontana», J. Lavrador, O. Meesse, in revue Beaux-Arts Magazine, 2014
  • « L. F. : Between utopia and Kitsch », A. White, Ed. MIT Press, 2014
  • « L. F. - Le spacialisme : l'aventure d'un …. », G. Joppolo, Ed. L'Harmattan, 2017
To read from the artist :
  • « Idee di Lucio Fontana » In Domus n° 271, Milan, 1952
  • « Ecrits », Ed. Les Presses du réel, Dijon, 2013
Website :
www.fondazioneluciofontana.it

More :


Art movements

+ SPACIALISM / 1938-1968 / Beniamino Joppolo, Antonino Tullier, etc.
+ NEW REALITIES / 1946-1956 / Etienne Béothy, Marcelle Cahn, etc.
All art movements

See & discover

Beyond works currently in stock, it seemed to me useful to combine business with pleasure by letting you discover others works by artists in my gallery. These artworks, now sold or removed from our website, have been in our stock in the past.

These pages will undoubtedly make it possible for some of you to associate an image with its title or the other way round, for others it will be a good time to discover more on such and such artist. For the sake of confidentiality – the pieces being no longer available – we won't display neither their numbering or their price. For whatever reason, make sure to visit this amazing art database with to date 6441 online works just for your pleasure! Michelle Champetier

See & discover