Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale "Attese".

LONDON.- On 18th October, during Frieze Art Week, an important new art gallery – the Imago Art Gallery - opens at 4 Clifford Street in Mayfair. The Imago Art Gallery aims to be an international point of reference for Italian Modern and Contemporary Art in a city that has become the epicentre for top creative and artistic talent worldwide.

A spectacular exhibition to launch the new gallery, entitled Beyond Space (18th October to 20th December), will feature over forty museum quality works of art by celebrated Italian painter and sculptor Lucio Fontana, one of the leading exponents of the “Spazialismo” movement. This will be the first significant exhibition of his work to take place in London since the Hayward Gallery exhibition of 1999 (the first ever having taken place at the McTunnard Gallery in London in 1962/63). The exhibition will be unique for the sheer quality and quantity of superb Fontana paintings that will be on view, some so rare that they have never been seen by the public before. It is estimated that the value of the works on display will be in excess of £40 million.

The breadth of paintings on view will show the artist’s evolution and maturity, representing an ideal summary of Fontana’s conceptual and expressive research. Highlights include Concetto Spaziale, Sole in piazza San Marco, 1961, one of a limited cycle that was inspired by the suggestive and evocative mood of Venice that Fontana experienced whilstM there. In Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1967, part of his “theatres” phase; the artist investigated and researched in depth, the concept of space and chromatic dialogue. While a further painting of the same year, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1967, is representative of Fontana’s most recognised and celebrated series, the ‘cuts’ and in particular the ‘white cuts’, illustrating the artist’s constant research of the gestures, harmony and rhythm of “space”.

Other key works include Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1962, which symbolises a cardinal point in Fontana’s work, here illustrating chromatic research although it is principally about materials, emotions and evocations. Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio, 1964, together with the "Venezie" cycle represents the heart of the exhibition; it is in fact one of the most noteworthy works by Fontana and part of a very limited series of similar works which illustrate one of the highest points of Fontana’s research and exploration. The painting, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1959, was published on the cover of the catalogue for the great Mostra Personale di Palazzo Forti "Metafore Barocche", and is distinguished by the already famous use of the "cuts", coupled with a profound chromatic contrast, which makes it unique within that genre. While Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1956, is representative of a series of works of art where Fontana focused and expressed his research through the dialogue between the materials and the chromatics of the stones and the colour.

Based over three floors of a Victorian town house, the new gallery will be run by Daniele Pescali, a member of the noted family of Milan art dealers and collectors, together with his wife Elisabetta. Pescali will continue a tradition begun three generations ago in Milan of offering important art from the mid-eighteenth century to the present as well as showcasing young and contemporary Italian artists destined for future accolades.

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale.