Lucio Fontana *

(Rosario di Santa Fe, Argentina 1899–1968 Milan) Concetto Spaziale, c.1959, enamelled terracotta, signed fontana, stamped on the reverse: Albisola, diameter 43 cm, (PP)

Photo certificate issued by the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan

The plate has been registered by the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan under the archive no. 3301/2 (ex no. 1277/31).

Provenance:
Galleria Stein, Turin;
Private Collection, Italy

The “Concetto spaziale” work in terracotta is part of a series by Fontana bearing the same title and created in 1959. The so-called “Tagli” - the characteristic slits - form the central element of the piece. “Fontana’s use of cuts in the late fifties was to be a decisive turning point in his work. (...) One important phase of Fontana’s artistic development in this period seems to be his production of ceramics at Albissola and the extension of the concept of the cut to clay sculpture. (...) It should be noted that, even when he was using clay, Fontana sought that sense of resetting and bare essentials expressed in the canvases: indeed, it is clear that the problem of the slit should no longer be ascribed to the concept of “opening”, albeit a symbolic one, but more simply to a “mark” which is neither a scratch, nor just a groove or trace, but the unique proof of (Fontana’s) “wait”: an act of conceptual order.” (Exhibition catalogue Lucio Fontana, Milan, London 2007, page 99-102)

эксперт: Mag. Patricia Pálffy