(Rosario di Santa Fe, Argentina 1899 -1968 Comabbio)
‘Concetto Spaziale, Attesa’, 1963 - 1964, titled, signed l. fontana on the reverse, waterpaint on canvas, white, 22.5 x 16.5 cm, framed, (AR)

The work has been registered by the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan under the archive no. 63–64 T 11.

Provenance:
Sotheby’s London, 22 February 1990 Lot 348
Private Collection, London
Agnellini Arte Moderna, Brescia (acquired in 2009)
European Private Collection

Exhibition:
Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Carlo Cardazzo. Una nuova visione dell’arte, 1 November - 9 February 2009, exh. cat. p. 252, with ill. (Curator: Luca Massimo Barbero) (label on the reverse)

Literature:
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, Skira, Geneva-Milan, 2006, Volume II, p. 647, no. 63–64 T 11 with ill.

Centuries of painting explored reality, attempting to absorb all of its secrets: from the discovery of foreshortening in the 15th century to the search for a Realism that would convey a faithful image of the world, from the Impressionists’ attempt to eternalise the passing of time on canvas and on to the breaking down of typical images in Cubism and Futurism. This process went as far as the abstract breakdowns that go beyond any objective reality, searching for pure form by means of the lyricism of colours and the geometry of forms. All of the aforementioned achievements have marked the history of modern and contemporary art, always remaining within the boundaries of two-dimensionality. By tearing apart his canvases, Fontana surpasses it all. And whilst a third dimension was never a characteristic of painting except in illusionist terms, he not only transformed it into an intrinsic feature but also went beyond, unifying the spatial and the temporal dimensions on the canvas by means of a revealing gesture. Fontana’s slits are incisions of his presence, lacerations of matter that are intended to go beyond what can be known and eternalise the infinite in a gesture.

The exceptional panache, the taste, the technical virtuosity, the intuitive freedom that characterise the artist’s oeuvre perfectly merge in the present work from 1963-64, a single cut on a pure, snow-white canvas, stimulating the dialogue between its brightness and the surrounding darkness that exudes from that crack.
This work was executed two to three years after the launch of the first man into space and testifies to Fontana’s passion for the incommensurability and mystery of that unknown and boundless place that would mark his entire production.
In 1966 single, white slits, just like the present one, were displayed on the occasion of the 33rd Venice Biennale in a room that Fontana himself had designed in collaboration with architect Carlo Scarpa: an entirely white space, in which snow-white canvases alternate, welcoming the viewer in a space that was “revealing, conceptual, almost metaphysical, representing the culmination of an operating experience.”
E. Crispolti

‘By demolishing tradition and academism and by tearing apart with a sharp blade both the canvas andevery residue of rhetoric and conventionality, he has imposed himself on the contemporary art stage with disruptive force and determination.’
P. Bertelli in ‘Fontana. Luce e Colore’, Skira, Milan 2008