Lucio Fontana

Rosario de Santa Fé, 1899 – Comabbio, 1968

Lucio Fontana was born in 1899 in Rosario de Santa Fé, Argentina, to parents of Italian origin. He began his artistic training in his father’s workshop as early as 1910; after a period in Italy, he returned to Argentina in the 1920s, where he won several competitions with his first sculptures.

In 1928, he returned to Milan and enrolled at the Accademia di Brera as a pupil of Adolf Wildt. Fontana participated in exhibitions and competitions in Spain, Argentina and Italy. At the same time, he also began working as a ceramist in Albisola, a small town in northern Italy. In 1940, he moved to Buenos Aires, where in 1946 he co-founded the Academia de Altamira art school, where the fundamental Manifesto Bianco would be drawn up.

In 1947, back in Milan, Fontana founded the Movimento spaziale, which was later followed by the publication of three Spatialist manifestos. In 1949, in addition to producing ceramics, he made his first Ambiente Spaziale (Spatial Environment) and created his buchi (holes), the first series of paintings in which he punctured the surface of the canvas. This was followed by other cycles for which he is internationally renowned, such as the tagli (slashes), characterised by one or more deep cuts in the canvas, the Nature, the Fine di Dio (End of God), and the teatrini (little theatres).

Works by Fontana can be found in the collections of the most renowned Italian and international museums. The artist has been included in countless solo and group exhibitions, including solo shows at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1987); Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna (1996-1997); Hayward Gallery, London (1999-2000); Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2006); The State Museum, St. Petersburg (2006); Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2008); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (2014); HangarBicocca, Milan (2017-2018); Metropolitan Museum – The Met Breuer, New York and Guggenheim, Bilbao (2019);MaMM, Moscow (2020); and Galleria Borghese, Rome (2019).