Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968), Concetto Spaziale, Attese, signed twice, titled and inscribed 1+1-887 on the reverse, waterpaint on canvas , 81.5 by 100.5cm.; 32 by 39 1/2 in. Executed in 1960-61. Estimate 700,000 — 900,000 GBP (970,198 - 1,247,39 7EUR). Lot sold 1,385,000 GBP. Photo Sotheby's

AUTHENTIFICATION: This work is registered in the Fondazione Lucio Fontana under number 3956/1 and is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity. 

PROVENANCE: Betty Barman, Brussels
Private Collection, Belgium (acquired from the above in July 1969)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Notes: Concetto Spaziale, Attese is a striking example of one of the most radical and instantly recognisable series of the post-war period. Across four measured tagli, each characterised by a cursive lyrical incision, this work exudes a palpable sense of elegance, simplicity, and vitality. Through the juxtaposition of the bold unmodulated orange background with the deep black void of the gestural cuts, it deftly engages with the spatial concepts of dimensionality and infinity in a manner entirely in keeping with the very apogee of Lucio Fontana’s praxis.

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1965. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Images: © Bridgeman Images Artwork: © Lucio Fontana/SIAE/DACS, London 2015

A pervasive sense of gesture suffuses the composition of Concetto Spaziale, Attese. The varying length, breadth, and curve of each line impart a sense of rhythm, of crescendo and diminuendo, as they draw the viewer’s gaze across the canvas. These are marks that are inextricable from their production – they are as much recorded passages of action through time as they are articulations of space. Their manual realisation is wholly bonded with their aesthetic and the sense of sculptural confidence that they imbue confirms this as the work of an artist at the height of his powers. 

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1962, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Images: © Bridgeman Images Artwork: © Lucio Fontana/SIAE/DACS, London 2015

Fontana’s work, and particularly his series of tagli, was closely linked with contemporaneous advances in space travel. Just as men like Yuri Gagarin broke through the atmosphere to reveal the infinite void of the cosmos, Fontana sliced open his canvas to reveal the void behind it and irrevocably changed the course of art. To this end, the telletta (the strips of black gauze positioned behind each cut) are as central to the interpretation of this work as the narrow slits themselves. They imply the blackness of space and the insurmountable nothingness of the cosmological void. In Fontana’s own words: “The discovery of the Cosmos is that of a new dimension. It is the infinite: thus I pierce this canvas, which is the basis of all arts and I have created an infinite dimension, an x which for me is the basis for all Contemporary Art” (Lucio Fontana quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York, 2006, p. 19). Through this paradigm-shifting series, Fontana asserts his own identity as a pioneer of painting and a founding father of contemporary art, perfectly positioned to lead the practice onwards into the second half of the Twentieth Century. 

Lucio Fontana Concetto Spaziale, Attese, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Images: © Bridgeman Images Artwork: © Lucio Fontana/SIAE/DACS, London 2015

In such a bold move of self-aggrandisement, Fontana was also posing a challenge to his cultural heritage. As an Italian painter, he was a direct successor to the innovators of linear perspective and the heir to a tradition based almost entirely on recession through the picture plane. By then cutting into his canvas, Fontana eschewed that construct, and forced the viewer to consider his work on a gestural level. He smashed the window they had become so accustomed to looking through and demanded that his work be received in its own arena: “at a time when people were talking about ‘planes’…making a hole was a radical gesture which broke the space of the canvas as if to say: after this we are free to do what we like” (Lucio Fontana in conversation with Daniele Palazzoli, Bit, No. 5, Milan, October-November 1967). 

The present work is typical of Fontana’s tagli in its conceptual power, and exceptional amongst his oeuvre for its gestural grace and beauty. In puncturing the canvas he precluded the viewer from looking into the recessional folly of perspectival depiction, and in covering the air behind it with his black telletta, he forced the viewer to consider the emptiness of the cosmological void. This is a nuanced, delicate work, characterised by the balance of Fontana’s composition, and brought to life by the power of his convictions.  

Sotheby's. Contemporary Art Evening Auction, 01 july 2015, London