Lot 4. Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968), Concetto spaziale, Attesa, signed, titled and inscribed finalmente è arrivato il sole... on the reverse, waterpaint on canvas, cm 55,5x38,4; inches 21.85 by 15.11. Framed: cm 66,6x49,5x5; inches 26.22 by 19.48 by 1.96. Executed in 1965. Lot sold: 730,800 EUR (Estimate: 400,000 - 600,000 EUR). © Sotheby's 2022

Note: "I have invented a formula, with the cut, that I can’t possibly refine. Through this technique, I have succeeded in communicating to the viewer a sensation of spatial calmness, of cosmic rigour and serenity.” Lucio Fontana, interviewed by Giorgio Bocca in 1966.

Fontana's full maturity does not show any tiredness or decline, on the contrary, it stands as a new great season of creative openness. Spanning about ten years, quantitatively the widest and richest cycle, and certainly one of the most significant and most popular of his entire works, the "cuts" represent the opening to a new, absolute vision. The cut in itself assumes the value of gestural synthesis, a sign that cleaves the surface sharply, inducing the viewer to imagine a further dimension.
The work presented here, executed in 1965 at the height of the artist's expressive maturity, summarizes Fontana's desire to chart a new course. The cut emerges symmetrically at the center of the canvas on a soft green surface, like a fissure which, by virtue of the chromatic choice here appears more than a perfectly preserved wound, like an opening to life stretched out in all its expressive force.

The happy inscription on the back of the painting "Finally the sun has arrived..." return us to another theme very important to Fontana, the theme of light, which he understood as a new technical medium of expression. Through his work he seems to want to free himself from the constraints of a closed volumetry in order to open himself to a new confrontation with the external space, both the institutional one and the more radically innovative one of the Spatial Environments. He himself declared that "...for centuries artists have followed the technique of painting, since a few months a group of artists perceive a new evolution of art, the spatial art, I can assure you that on the moon you will not make painting - but you will make spatial art. "

Lot 25. Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968), Concetto spaziale, Natura, each signed on the reverse; each numbered 402/500 under the base, brass, two elements, cm 26,5x22; inches 10.4 by 8.6 each element (ciascun elemento). Executed in 1967. Lot sold: 239,400 EUR (Estimate: 80,000 - 120,000 EUR). © Sotheby's 2022

Note: “By cutting the ties hat connect a great number of expressions known as avant-garde expressionism, to more classical and aesthetic data, Fontana has created a kind of spatial art that is overall supplementary to the space of others. In terms of greatness he can be compared only to Picabia. His ‘paintings with holes’ and his ‘bowls’ are the areoliths of a future art that fell on us in the present time: we can only start dreaming.” Alain Jouffroy, Galerie XX siècle, Paris 1965

Lot 48. Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968), Crocefisso, signed and dated 59, painted and glazed terracotta; cm 39x32x5,3; inches 15.35 by 12.59 by 2.08. Framed: cm 54x47x9; inches 21.25 by 18.50 by 3.54. Executed in 1967. Lot sold: 90,720 EUR (Estimate: 40,000 - 60,000 EUR). © Sotheby's 2022

Note: "I am a sculptor and not a potter. I have never turned a plate on a lathe or painted a vase. I dislike lace and shades.... The critics said Ceramist. I said Sculptor." Lucio Fontana.

Sotheby's. Contemporary Auction, Milan, 13 April 2022