(Rosario di Santa Fe, Argentina 1899–1968 Comabbio)
Concetto spaziale, Attese (65- 66 T 21), 1965–1966, signed, titled, inscribed on the reverse l. Fontana/”Concetto spaziale”/ATTESE/ è venuto [sic] a trovarmi/Maria/Ghiringelli [sic], waterpaint on yellow canvas, 46.3 x 55.5 cm, framed

The present work is registered at the Archivio Lucio Fontana, Milan, under no. 1737/7.

Provenance:
Private Collection, London
Galleria Blu, Stockholm
Gallery Art Point, Tokyo
Private Collection, Japan
Galleria Dante Vecchiato, Padova
Private Collection, Europe

Exhibition:
Stockholm, Galerie Bleue, 1971;
Tokyo, Tama Art University Museum, Lucio Fontana. Spatial Conception, 1 June – 4 September 1990, exhib. cat., p. 69, no. 65, ill.

Literature:
London, Christie’s, 5 December 1986, p. 28, no. 731, ill.; “Le battaglie di Lucio”, in: Arte In, no. 75, October–November 2001, p. 75, ill.;
Enrico Crispolti, Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, Skira, Milan, 2006, vol. II, p. 821, no. 65–66 T 21, ill.

Note:
The inscription on the reverse refers to Maria Ghiringhelli, whose family owned the Galleria del Milione in Milan in its early days.

Fontana does not fear emptiness as most artists tend to; he even searches for it and – tearing and piercing his canvases – denounces its pervasiveness to the world. With a simple gesture, decisive and revelatory, he surpasses the limits of two-dimensionality, or ‚“illusory three-dimensionality“, and unites the dimensions of space and time. Fontana‘s gesture has nothing to do with that instinctive act of action painting, or the automatism of Surrealism: rather the „wounds“ inflicted on his canvases represent the pure desire to arrive at new dimensions, to exceed the knowable and to generate new processes of life.
In the work in question, three vertical and one oblique slits disrupt rhythmically the blaring and lively monochromaticism of the canvas, directing the viewer‘s mind to the perception of that fourth dimension, which characterises the artist‘s various „spatial research“.

Pittura Oggetto
video and article on the Milanese art scene of the 1960s from the myART MAGAZINE