Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968), Concetto Spaziale, Teatrino - Sotheby's

signed and titled on the reverse, waterpaint on canvas and lacquered wood, 175 by 202cm. 68 7/8 by 79 1/2 in. Executed in 1965. Estimation: 800,000 - 1,200,000 GBP

PROVENANCE: Helme Prinzen, Kaarst
Alexander Iolas Gallery, New York
Galerie Reckermann, Cologne
Sale: Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art, Part I, 26 June 1996, Lot 51
Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne. Acquired from the above by the present owner

LITTERATURE: A. Modonesi and A. C. Spinola, Artecasa, November 1965, p. 52, illustrated
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogue raisonné des peinteures et environments spatiaux, Vol. II, Brussels 1974, p. 172, no. 65 TE 45, illustrated
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogo Ragionato di Sculture, Dipinti, Ambientazioni, Vol. II, Milan 1986, p. 600, no.65 TE 45, illustrated
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogo Ragionato di Sculture, Dipinti, Ambientazioni, Vol. II, Milan 2006, p. 789, no.65 TE 45, illustrated

NOTE: Spanning nearly two metres in height and two metres across, the monumental Concetto Spaziale, Teatrino from 1965 is among the very largest and most elegant works ever to issue from Lucio Fontana’s iconic oeuvre. Hailing from the teatrini - literally, ‘little theatres’ - series, the present work was executed during a period of intensely concentrated production between 1964 and 1966. Extraordinarily immersive in scale, only one teatrino is larger, and resides in the permanent collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. One further teatrino in the exact same scale of the present work is found in a private collection, while another very slightly smaller is in the permanent collection of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome. While Fontana’s feverish pace of work saw him produce nearly 180 teatrini in total, Concetto Spaziale, Teatrino and the handful of teatrini manifesting comparable grandeur, constitute the museum pieces and crowning achievements of the series. Exhibiting Fontana’s preferred colour combination for the teatrini - the minimalist chic of black lacquer on charcoal painted canvas - the dark surfaces of the present work plumb the spatial depths that Fontana so urgently wished to penetrate.

Fontana referred to the teatrini as “realist Spatialism” because of their unusually representative imagery (the artist quoted in: Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana: Catalogo Ragionato di Sculture, Dipinti, Ambientazioni, Vol. I, Milan 2006, p. 79). Advanced in five manifestos published from 1947 to 1952, Spatialism articulated Fontana’s ideas regarding the Infinite and man’s existence in multiple dimensions. His famous tagli (cuts) and buchi (holes), like those which adorn
the present work, were revolutionary acts to liberate the canvas from two-dimensional illusionism and incorporate the third and fourth dimensions: depth and time. Opposed to figuration, Fontana nevertheless conceived the teatrini to resemble theatres occupied by mysterious and pseudo-organic forms. Scholar Enrico Crispolti has evocatively described these allusive shapes: “waves… rounded forms, sometimes with a deep slash at the top, mountains or atomic mushroom clouds, or otherwise humanoid and alien figures… serpents… trees… or a low, tiny, indistinct horizon, whose low edge gives way to an infinite sky” (Ibid., p. 79). His rapprochement with figuration, via the silhouette, may have been inspired by a trip that Fontana took to Egypt in 1964. Previously, Fontana had said that he regarded ancient Egypt as the birthplace of the profile, and thus the second dimension in art (Pia Gottschaler, Lucio Fontana: The Artist and His Materials, Los Angeles 2012, p.118).

Whereas many teatrini possess a single horizon along the lower edge, Crispolti has observed that “the more imaginative ones suggest a photographic ‘fish eye’ effect” (Encrico Crispolti, Op.cit., p.79). With its elements floating along the top and right, Concetto Spaziale, Teatrino is clearly one such ‘fish eye’ composition where the theatrical and frontal organisation of space gives way to a more encompassing, celestial view. For Fontana, the vastness of space represented the final frontier of man’s technological advancement, and it appeared soon to be conquered. His artistic innovations were driven by a belief that: “the man of today… is too lost in a dimension that is immense for him, is too oppressed by the triumphs of science, is too dismayed by the inventions that follow one after the other, to recognize himself in figurative painting. What is wanted is an absolutely new language” (the artist quoted in: Anthony White,Lucio Fontana: Between Utopia and Kitsch, Cambridge 2011, p. 260). Fontana’s concern with humanity’s nascent inability to depict itself is addressed by the teatrini, and is recalled by Anthony White’s astute observation that the 1960s “saw a major change of focus in Fontana’s work… the artist shifted attention away from the problem of the authorial body to refocus on the body of the spectator” (Ibid., p. 249). Whereas earlier works focused on transgressing the pictorial surface, the teatrini reveal Fontana’s desire to confront the human individual and their changing place in the universe. Depicting a long and undulating line of bucchi streaming across a black canvas - the present work’s Milky Way - thus amounted to pondering the unknowable vastness of empty space, which contained an electrifying power to transform man and his own self-image.

Fontana approached the creation of the teatrini holistically, taking care to integrate the buchi and the silhouettes into a single design. He most probably fixed the painted canvas onto the lacquer frame before piercing the neat, evenlysized holes into its surface, in order to observe a formal harmony between the two portions. At first Fontana placed the holes randomly and liberally, but from 1965 they evince a greater rarity, and a proclivity towards patterns, shapes, and undulating lines, as in the present work. Generally he would create a small preparatory sketch to achieve the ideal design, occasionally creating large 1:1 plans on paper for his master wood-workers to reference. Perhaps most significantly, however, Fontana left a gap between the frame and the canvas of a few centimetres, which allows the silhouette to cast shadows on its backdrop and enhance the perception of depth. The contrast between the opulently shiny lacquer and the deep matte of the canvas further divides Concetto Spaziale (Teatrino) into receding planes.

Scholar Pia Gottschaler believes the teatrini also respond to “Pop Art’s contoured figures” and has shown that contemporary Italian critics immediately perceived the Pop references within this series (Gottschaler, Op.cit., p. 117). Following the 1964 Venice Biennale, where Robert Rauschenberg was awarded the Grand Prize of the Jury, American Pop was subject to increased attention in Italy. Artists responded, germinating such iconic works as Pino Pascali’s finte sculture, a series of canvas sculptures depicting prehistoric and imaginary animals initiated in 1966, whose stylistic emphasis on the silhouette shares an affinity with the concise metonymic language of the comic book. While Fontana’s primary theoretical commitment was to Spatialism, he valued Pop Art’s rejection of Abstract Expressionism’s theatrical gestures and rebellion against conventional figuration.

By focusing upon the act of looking, the teatrini also echo Pop’s conceptual emphasis on the ascendance of visual imagery in post-war Western culture. Although the teatrini’s diminutive name belies the imposing scale of the present work, their title bespeaks the miniaturisation of objects for mass consumption. They are reminiscent also of temporary theatres in the street or on travelling caravans, where smaller frames with puppets or players would be employed. While Fontana’s concerns differed from those of American Pop artists, he would have appreciated that alluding to popular culture contributed to dismantling false and precious ideologies surrounding ‘fine art’ and the sanctity of pictorial surfaces. The teatrini thus evince a period of rich experimentation and self-examination, when Fontana wished to extend his Spatialist practice and did so by using varied means - including elements of the popular - to highlight the tension between the viewer, the observed, and the space between.

Describing the teatrini, Enrico Crispolti wrote: “[t]he sharpness of the lacquered shaped frames and the clean grounds of sky traversed by ordered constellations of holes indicate a new desire to create an objectified configuration of a kind of spatial ‘spectacle’, which Fontana presents with an almost classical imaginative composure” (Encrico Crispolti, Op.cit., p.79). Crispolti’s analysis recalls Fontana’s chosen phrase “Spatialist Realism”, which suggests that the teatrini represent a picture or illustration of Spatialism itself. More than merely implementing Fontana’s theories, the teatrini literally depict them and the problems that Fontana sought to address in a spectacle that draws the viewer within his model of the universe. Breathtakingly expansive and black as the reaches of space itself, Concetto Spaziale, Teatrino magnificently realises Fontana’s vision.

Sotheby's. Contemporary Art Evening Auction. London | 26 juin 2013 - www.sothebys.com