Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, 1952. Oil and glass on canvas, 80 x 65 cm / Frame: 100 x 85 x 10.5 cm. Price available upon inquiry. GALERIE KARSTEN GREVE AG at TEFAF 2024. © 2024 TEFAF

Provenance: Private collection, Varigotti (Finale Ligure) (Archivio Fontana 321/3)
Karsten Greve, Cologne (Archivio Fontana 1759/48)
Martin Z. Margulies Collection, Miami, USA (Archivio Fontana 3541/1)
Galerie Karsten Greve AG, St. Moritz.

Literature: Turin 1970: Lucio Fontana, exh.cat. Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, no. 81, listed p. 56, ill. n. p.
Crispolti, Enrico 1974: Lucio Fontana. Catalogue raisonné, Brussels 1974, vol. II, no. 52 P 1, listed p. 30, ill. p. 31.
Crispolti, Enrico 1986: Lucio Fontana, Catalogo Generale, Milan 1986, vol. I, no. 52 P 1, listed p. 116, ill. p. 117.
Cologne 1988: Lucio Fontana. Bilder, exh.cat. Galerie Karsten Greve, p. 6, ill. p. 7.
New York 1988: Art in America, vol. 76, no. 9, September 1988, ill. p. 7
Münster 1992/93: Das offene Bild – Aspekte der Moderne in Europa nach 1945, exh.cat. Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte (exhibition poster motif), ill. p. 138.
Krefeld 1994/1995: Im weißen Raum: Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Krefeld, no. 3, mentioned p. 14, listed p. 68, ill. n. p.
Crispolti, Enrico 2006: Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, vol. I, no. 52 P 1, ill. p. 254.
Margulies, Martin Z. 2018: Martin Z. Margulies Collection, Miami 2018, vol. I, no. 98, ill. p. 194.

Signature: Verso signed, titled and dated: l.fontana Concetto spaziale 1952

Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968) spent his early years in Argentina before studying sculpture in Italy in 1927, where he exhibited his work for the first time in 1930 at Galleria Il Milione in Milan. Over the next ten years, he spent his time between Italy and France, collaborating with expressionist and abstract painters. In 1946, after teaching sculpture in Buenos Aires since 1940, he published his "Manifesto blanco", in which he developed his theory of spatialism. In 1947, Fontana returned to Milan, where he co-founded the "Movimento Spaziale", a movement linked to his concept of the unity of time and space. Numerous museum exhibitions have paid tribute to his work, such as Centre Georges Pompidou (1987), the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna (1996 - 1997), the Hayward Gallery, London (1999 - 2000), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2006) or the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome (2008).

For this edition of TEFAF Maastricht 2024, Galerie Karsten Greve AG presents a unique work on canvas by Lucio Fontana, his first painting from the "Pietre" series. With oil paint and shards of glass on perforated canvas, "Concetto spaziale" (1952) marks an essential step on the artist's path to spatialism and the beginning of Fontana's work on canvas. The use of glass on canvas in "Concetto Spaziale" (1952) evokes a constellation or elements coming from the cosmos, traces from outer space, as the pieces of glass seem to initiate the perforation, the crack in the center of the canvas, announcing the arrival of the well-known series of cuts, the famous “Attese”. Spatialism also draws its inspiration from Baroque and Futurism in its relationship to time and movement.