Concetto Spaziale, 1959

Ceramic wall object

Dimensions: 38 x 29 x 1 cm

As a child, Fontana moved with his Italian parents - his father was a sculptor - from Argentina to Milan. In Milan, he studied at the Accademia di Brera, had his first solo exhibition at the "Galleria del Milione" in 1930 and participated in the 17th Venice Biennale.

With the manifestos of his "Movimento spaziale" (Spatial Art) from 1947 onwards, he assumed the end of all static art genres, which were to be replaced by a dynamic art. The work was to work solely from the viewer's imagination by being freed "from all painterly and propagandistic rhetoric". Fontana implemented this new spatial concept by perforating paintings, thus achieving plasticity instead of a two-dimensional work.

His Ambiente Spaziale (spatial installations), e.g. Ambiente nero from 1948/1949, are considered the first "environments" of modern art. The beginning of the series Fine di Dio, The End of God, from 1963, shows monochrome, oval paintings with holes or cuts. However, the general reduction of his work to a single group of works does not do justice to the artist. He used a variety of materials, motifs and forms in different artistic genres. Fontana was above all a sculptor, but also a painter, inventor, ceramist, light artist and space specialist. With his work, he inspired the artist group ZERO and the movements of Nouveau Réalisme and Arte Povera.