Lucio Fontana - Buy or sell works
19 February 1899, Rosario di Santa Fe (Argentina) – 7 September 1968, Comabbio (Italy)
Lucio Fontana is among the most important and most influential avant-garde Italian artists of the 1960s. He became known above all for his perforated canvases (entitled ‘Concetti spaziali’, ‘Spatial Concepts’).
Fontana was born to Italian immigrant parents in Rosario, Argentina, on 19 February 1899. He studied sculpture at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Italy from 1928–1930.
During World War II, Fontana went back to Argentina, where he worked on his theories of a spatial concept. He began titling his works accordingly in 1947. His manifesto of the ‘Concetto spaziale’ defined his ideas of a dynamic art that would have a more three-dimensional, energetic impact. After returning to Italy in 1947, Fontana elaborated on his spatial concept and began creating three-dimensional works using perforation as a technique. Fontana conceived his works to be an expansion of traditional painting expansion into the third dimension; his most famous group of works, which he called ‘Tagli’, feature slit canvases. Among his most innovative projects are his installations of floating shapes in dimly lit rooms illuminated by neon tubes. Fontana was awarded the Grand Prix for Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1966. He died in Comabbio, Italy, the native town of his mother, in 1968.