BIOGRAPHY

1899 -1920
School years in Italy; enlisting and graduating as a building surveyor in Milan

Lucio Fontana was born on February 19, 1899, in Rosario, Argentina, to parents of Italian descent. His mother, Lucia Bottini, was a theater actress; his father, Luigi Fontana, a sculptor. Arriving in Latin America in 1890, Luigi was the first artist to open a sculpture studio in the city, which soon became a cultural landmark, also active in training native sculptors. From school age, in order to guarantee him solid training in the family tradition, Lucio was sent to Italy for studies and stayed with relatives in Castiglione Olona, in the province of Varese. From 1906 to 1911 he attended the Collegio Torquato Tasso in Biumo Inferiore (near Varese) and, once he had taken his elementary school leaving certificate, continued his studies at the technical school of the Collegio Arcivescovile Ballerini, in Seregno. Thus began the artist’s apprenticeship, commencing with practice in the studio of his sculptor father (who had returned to Italy in the meantime) and studying, at the same time, at the School of Master Builders of the “Carlo Cattaneo” Technical Institute in Milan and the School of Artisans attached to the Brera Academy. 

In 1916, due to Italy’s deep involvement in World War I, Fontana interrupted his schooling and enlisted as a volunteer, reaching the rank of second lieutenant of infantry. He was wounded in the Karst and discharged with a silver medal for military valor. In 1921 he was back in Milan, where he thus resumed his studies, obtaining a diploma as a building surveyor.

1922-1930
The formative years

In 1922 he returned to the country of his birth, Rosario, where he began work in his father’s atelier, “Fontana y Scarabelli,” whose important production focused on public and commemorative sculpture. After his success in 1924 in the competition for a relief in memory of Louis Pasteur for the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Rosario, a work that marked his debut in the arts, he decided, together with painter Julio Vanzo, to open his own sculpture studio. Dating from this period are his first appearances at various Salons, his participation in public competitions, and his first major commissions, including the monument to educator Juana Elena Blanco for the El Salvador cemetery in Rosario. In mid-1927 he returned to Milan, where he enrolled in the first year of sculpture at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts (1927-28). Here he began taking courses from Adolfo Wildt and the School of Marble: at the end of the year he was promoted to the 4th course and, at the end of 1929, he graduated, presenting as his final work the sculpture El auriga (The Charioteer, 1928).

The maestro’s influence was still strong in this period and can be seen, among other works, in the various realizations for Milan’s Monumental Cemetery, a place where the most important sculptors active in the area have traditionally tried their hand since the mid-nineteenth century (Mapelli Chapel, 1928; Cemetery Loculi Pasta and Lentati 1929, Berardi Tomb, 1930). For Fontana, 1930 was a year filled with significant events: he participated in the 17th Venice Biennale, presenting the sculptures Eva (Eva, 1928) and Vittoria fascista (Fascist Victory, 1929), and exhibited at Il Milione Gallery in Milan Uomo nero (Black Man, 1930), a work of profound rupture.

1931-1940
Early technical and figurative experiments and return to Argentina

With Uomo nero (Black Man) Fontana began a new phase of research that saw the birth of sculptural proposals executed in plaster or terracotta where one finds a synthetic and primitivist mark, and the unprecedented use of color in an anti-naturalist and anti-representational key. His first important collaborations with architects also date back to these years, emblematic among which is his participation in 1933 in the 5th Milan Triennale where he collaborated with architects Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini and the BBPR group. Between 1934 and 1935 Fontana, having approached the Parisian “Abstraction-Création” group and the abstractionism art scene that gravitated around Il Milione Gallery, also produced a series of non-figurative sculptures exhibited in this gallery as part of a controversial solo show, which in fact marks the first exhibition of abstract sculpture in Italy. 

Continuing research, from 1936 to 1939 he devoted himself with particular intensity to ceramic sculpture, working mainly in Albissola in the work space of Giuseppe Mazzotti, father of his friend Tullio d’Albissola, a Futurist sculptor and poet, but also in France at the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, one of the most renowned artistic furnaces in Europe, where he spent several months in 1937. Three major solo exhibitions at the Jeanne Bucher-Myrbor Gallery (1937) and Il Milione Gallery (April and December 1938) would be devoted to the artistic production conceived in these contexts. The collaborations with architects with important commissions in Italy and abroad, including Giancarlo Palanti, Luciano Baldessari, Marco Zanuso, Marcello Piacentini, BBPR, and many others, continued, as did the autonomous artistic experimentation that led him to the creation in 1940 of all-round sculptures in colored mosaic. However, in the spring of 1940, he left from Genoa for Argentina to follow with utmost dedication the new competition for the Monumento Nacional a la Bandera, to be erected in Rosario.

1941-1950
The years of teaching in Argentina and the birth of Spatialism

Truly settled in Argentina, Fontana set to working as a sculptor, very avidly as always, and his work was met with great interest. His pieces were displayed in numerous exhibitions, and he received various awards. In addition, he continued to teach during these years, first as professor of “modeling” at the Escuela de Artes Plasticas in Rosario, then of “decoration” at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredon in Buenos Aires and of “modeling” at the Escuela de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano in Buenos Aires. In 1946 he was among the founders and teachers of Altamira Escuela Libre de Artes Plàsticas in Buenos Aires, which became an important center of cultural dissemination. From his contact with young artists and intellectuals and from new research ideas he encountered, the Manifiesto Blanco was born in 1946. It was published in leaflet form and written by Bernardo Arias, Horacio Cazenueve, Marcos Fridman, and also signed by Pablo Arias, Rodolfo Burgos, Enrique Benito, César Bernal, Luis Coli, Alfredo Hansen, and Jorge Rocamonte.

In the same year, the expression “Concetto Spaziale” (Spatial Concept) appeared in the titles of a group of the artist’s drawings. They would accompany much of his subsequent artistic production. On March 22, 1947, it was once again Italy’s turn: he embarked in Buenos Aires on the ship Argentina. Back in Milan, he executed two plaster sculptures— Concetto spaziale, Uomo Atomico (Spatial Concept, Atomic Man) and Scultura spaziale (Spatial Sculpture) (the latter presented the following year at the 24th Venice Bienniale)—which marked the start of a completely new research phase, no longer figurative or abstract, but authentically spatial. He also resumed work in terracotta and ceramics in Albissola. Also in Milan, he began a relationship with a group of young artists and intellectuals gravitating around Carlo Cardazzo’s Naviglio Gallery and, after meetings and discussions, Spaziali—the first spatialist manifesto—came into being in December, signed, in addition to Fontana, by critic Giorgio Kaisserlian, philosopher Beniamino Joppolo, and writer Milena Milani.

In 1948, the second version of the manifesto – followed shortly by a third version: Proposta per un regolamento (Proposal for Regulations), 1950 – reiterated the need to overcome the art of the past, making “the painting come out of its frame and the sculpture out of its glass bell,” and to produce new forms of art using the innovative technical means made available. 

The year 1949 marked a decisive moment in Fontana’s spatial research, which opened up to environmental and pictorial dimensions. On February 5, he created Ambiente spaziale a luce nera (Spatial Environment in Black Light) at the Naviglio Gallery, in which a series of papier-mâché silhouettes painted with fluorescent colors were hung from the ceiling of the exhibition space, which was completely darkened and lit only with Wood lamps; this was the first “Spatial Environment” conceived by Fontana. The same year saw the start of the “Holes” cycle, pictorial works where swirls of holes made with an awl are added to the chromatic intervention.

He also continued his ceramic production, which in these years was exhibited in significant exhibitions including Twentieth-Century Italian Art, at MoMA in New York (1949), and the Venice Biennale of 1948 and 1950. The year 1950 ended with his participation in the competition for the 5th door of Milan Cathedral, announced by the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo.

1951-1960
The use of neon and the research of the 1950s. 

On April 25, 1951, the models submitted for the competition for the Duomo door were judged. Together with Luciano Minguzzi, Francesco Messina, and Enrico Manfrini, Fontana moved on to the second grade of the competition (won in 1952 ex-aequo with Minguzzi) and led to his creations being displayed in the central hall of the 9th Milan Triennale. Also as part of this Triennale, he made Struttura al neon (Neon Structure) a large arabesque of light conceived for the grand staircase of the Palazzo dell’arte and Soffitto a luce indiretta (Ceiling with Indirect Lighting) in the vestibule and lobby, both as part of an environmental structuring by architects Luciano Baldessari and Marcello Grisotti. He also participated in the De Divina Proportione conference, expounding concepts that will be collected the same year in the Manifesto tecnico dello Spazialismo (Technical Manifesto of Spatialism).

On November 26, 1951 he signed the fourth manifesto: Manifesto dell’arte spaziale (Manifesto of Spatial Art). He continued to work intensively on the “Holes” cycle, presenting them for the first time in a group exhibition of spatial art at Naviglio Gallery and a few months later in the same gallery in a solo show. In Milan the following year he married Teresita Rasini, whom he had met in 1930, and moved his studio from Via Prina to 23 Corso Monforte. 

On May 17, he signed the Manifesto del movimento spaziale per la televisione (Manifesto of the Spatialist Movement for Television) and conducted luminous experiments with some works as part of the first television broadcasts of RAI in Milan, which would officially start its programming only two years later. In the 1950s, he took part in art exhibitions of international importance and steadily nourished his research in painting. In addition to the holes motif, the canvases were enriched with full-bodied elements of color and fragments of glass, giving way to the “Stones” cycle (consecrated in 1955, after their exhibition at the 7th Roman Quadrenniale). From 1954 he further developed his language, creating alongside the cycle of “Stones,” new works identified with the series of “Impastos” and the series of  “Baroques”. At the 29th Venice Biennale (1958) he had an entire room to give space to his most recent productions. In addition to the “Impastos” and the “Baroques,” some of the “Inks” and the spatial sculptures on stalks, which the artist had been working on since 1957, were exhibited. At the culmination of the research pursued in this decade, the “Slashes” took shape, conceived towards the end of 1958 and presented for the first time the following year in solo exhibitions in Milan at the Naviglio Gallery and at the Stadler Gallery in Paris. Later in the same year they were presented in important exhibitions: at Documenta in Kassel and at the 5th São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. 

Toward the end of the decade, Fontana also conceived the “Quanta” series, cores of shaped canvases, composable in different ways, and the “Natures” series, made in Albissola, large spherical sculptures or complementary bivalve forms in terracotta crossed by gashes and slashes. The former, familiarly called “balloons” by the artist, were first exhibited at Palazzo Grassi in Venice (1960) and in two major solo shows at Pagani del Grattacielo Gallery in Milan (1961) and Iris Clert Gallery in Paris (1961).

1961-1968
International exhibitions, the 1966 Venice Biennale and the last period in Comabbio

From the beginning of the 1960s, Fontana concentrated with particular effort on the series of “Oils”, works on canvas where the thick layer of pictorial material is shot through with holes or tears. To this series belong the works dedicated to the city of Venice, shown at his first U.S. solo exhibition at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York (1961). In the same year, inspired by the New York metropolis, he also conceived a new type of work: the “Metals” mirrored sheets on which he intervened by tearing and cutting the surface. Also dating from the first half of the 1960s is the series of the “End of God”, oval-shaped canvases, monochrome, or sometimes sprinkled with sequins, crisscrossed with holes and lacerations, presented in 1963 at the Gimpel Hanover Gallery in Zurich and at the Ariete Gallery in Milan, and the following year at the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris. At the same time Fontana worked on the “Little Theaters”, works in which perforated canvases are set in shaped lacquered wooden frames. These were years of intense research and activity, which earned Fontana international recognition at several important exhibitions, including, in addition to those mentioned, solo shows at Mc Robert’s and Tunnard Gallery in London (1960, 1961), Städtisches Museum in Leverkusen (1962), and Tokyo Gallery in Tokyo (1962).

Throughout the 1960s Fontana also deepened the environmental research begun with the Ambiente spaziale a luce nera (Spatial Environment in Black Light), with a series of “Spatial Environments” conceived for group exhibitions (Venice, Palazzo Grassi, 1960; Milan, 13th Triennale, together with Nanda Vigo, 1964; Foligno, Palazzo Trinci, 1967; Kassel, Documenta 4, 1968; Venice, 34th Biennale, 1968), as well as for the important solo shows dedicated to him (Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 1966; Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, 1967; Genoa, Galleria del Deposito, 1967).

In 1966 at the 33rd Venice Biennale he collaborated with architect Carlo Scarpa, creating a labyrinthine oval room lit by white light where five white canvases crossed by a single slash are displayed within niches: a work of extraordinary echo that won the painting prize. 

Finally, 1967 saw some new experiments such as lacquered metal sculptures on which slashes and holes were made mechanically, and the series of “Ellipses”: elliptical boards of variously colored lacquered wood pierced with holes made by machine, with which Fontana explored a language that transcended the boundary separating painting and sculpture. The latter were exhibited in the same year at the Marlborough Gallery in Rome, La Bussola Gallery in Turin, and Alexandre Iolas Gallery in New York.

At the beginning of 1968 Lucio Fontana left his studio in Corso Monforte and moved to Comabbio (Varese), where he continued to work with particular attention to the series of “Holes” and “Slashes”.

He died at the age of 69 in Varese on September 7 of the same year.