Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968), Concetto Spaziale, Attesa. Photo Sotheby's
signed, titled and variously inscribedStrepitoso/Gimondi/dominato/Pulidor/nella/“Cronoscalata” on the reverse; waterpaint on canvas, 118 by 91cm. 46 1/2 by 35 5/8 in. Executed in 1965. Estimation: 2,200,000 - 2,800,000 GBP
PROVENANCE:
Marlborough Gallery, RomeCattaneo Collection, Brescia
Galleria Leone, Venice
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in the early 1970s
EXHIBITED: Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; Austin, University of Texas Museum, Lucio Fontana. The Spatial Concept of Art, 1966-67, no. 45, illustrated
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum; Endhoven, Stedelijk van Abbenmuseum, Lucio Fontana - Concetti Spaziali, 1967, no.54, illustrated
Stockholm, Moderna Museet, Fontana. Idéer om rymden, 1967, no. 45
Hannover, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Lucio Fontana, 1968, no. 45, illustrated
Rimini, Sala Comunale d'Arte Contemporanea, Lucio Fontana, 1982, no. 70, illustrated in colour
Varese, Varese Incontri, Lucio Fontana, 1985, no. 81, illustrated in colour
Rivoli, Castello di Rivoli, Lucio Fontana. La cultura dell'occhio, 1986, p. 61 and p. 122, no. 44, illustrated in colour
Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Lucio Fontana,1998, front cover and p. 273, no. 4, illustrated in colour
LITTERATURE: Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogue raisonné des peintures, scultures et environments spatiaux, Vol. II, Brussels 1974, pp. 160-61, no. 65 T 31, illustrated
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana. Catalogue Generale, Vol. II, Milan 1986, p. 563, no. 65 T 31, illustrated
Dino Marangon, Spazialismo: Protagonisti, Idee, Iniziative, Quinto di Travise 1993, pl. 11, illustrated
Nicoletta Pallini, 'Antologia di Fontana', Gioia, Milan, 16 May 1998, illustrated
Marco Di Capua, 'Quello di Tagli. Cinque mostre a Milano', Ars, May 1999, p. 73, illustrated in colour
Angela Vettese, Lucio Fontana. I tagli, Ciniselo Balsamo 2003, p. 31, illustrated in colour
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana. Catalogo Ragionato di Sculpture, Dipinti, Ambientazioni, Vol. II, Milan 2006, p. 751, no. 65 T 31, illustrated
NOTE DE CATALOGUE: Mesmerisingly serene and imposing in its purity, Concetto Spaziale, Attesa is an unmitigated paragon of Lucio Fontana’s revolutionary artistic and philosophical innovation. Enshrining the single most iconic act of the artist’s career in rare monumental proportions, the present work stands among the most powerful and undiluted expressions of Fontana’s groundbreaking rupture of normative spatial and visual concepts. The utterly pristine white surface articulated with a precisely and masterfully incised single cut delivers a visual experience of absolute clarity verging on the transcendental. Belonging to only ten works created in this grand scale and articulated on a pure white ground in 1965, the present work counts among the most iconic of the Concetto Spaziale, Attesa – Fontana’s most revered and instantly recognised body of work. Significantly, this particular work possesses an extraordinary and extensive exhibition history. First exhibited as part of the artist’s early and important international retrospective in 1967, Concetto Spaziale Attesawas also included in Fontana’s major show held the following year at the KestnerGessellschaft in Hannover; what’s more, in 1998 this work was prestigiously chosen as the cover image for the artist’s retrospective exhibition in Rome. The importance of the single and monumental white slash in Fontana’s oeuvre is utterly unparalleled: chosen as the single supreme format for the artist’s exhibition at the Venice Biennale of 1966, the white single slash was the dominating expression for the immersive spatial environment curated by Fontana as the foremost manifestation of his artistic vision. Thus, marking the apogee of Fontana’s creation and a paragon ofconceptual and formal elegance, the present work unassailably generates a sublime effect that induces the viewer into the pure white fields of its encompassing simplicity and expansive surface. Amidst the wide variety of works articulated in a multitude of colours with numerous cuts in varying scales, the present example exquisitely and forcefully comprises the purest and most absolute essence of Fontana’s art.
Soon after this work came into being Fontana gave expression to his radical breach of the untarnished and untouched primed canvas: “With the taglio, I have invented a formula that I think I cannot perfect…. I succeeded in giving those looking at my work a sense of spatial calm, of cosmic rigor, of serenity with regard to the Infinite. Further than this I could not go” (the artist quoted in: Pia Gottschaller, Lucio Fontana: The Artist’s Materials, Los Angeles 2012, p. 58). A gesture of singular art historical importance, Fontana’s transgressive incision realised his concept of ‘Spatialism’, a sophisticated intellectual theory further advanced by the artist in four manifestos published between 1947 and 1952. Nonetheless, though utterly forward-looking and progressive, Fontana’s dialogue invoked a point of connection with Renaissance masters of alabaster or Carrara marble, whose historic innovation induced a revolt of form against material to transgress the resolute physicality of sculpture. In Fontana’s words, Michelangelo “wants to virtually abolish [marble], and he makes his last Pietàs as though he wanted only to make them from pure spirit, from pure light” (the artist cited in: Sarah Whitfield, ‘Handling Space’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, Hayward Gallery, Lucio Fontana, 2000, p.42). Indeed, Fontana’s Attesa is unmistakably imbued with an equivalently votive and contemplative aura to echo Michelangelo’s exquisite late Pietàs. Photographs documenting Fontana’s iconic contribution to the 1966 Venice Biennale emphatically deliver this point. Furnished solely by the single-slash white tagli, Fontana designed and curated an entirely white Ambienti Spaziale (Spatial Environment). Their configuration bespeaks an atmosphere of holiness, conflating the gallery room with a light-flooded chapel; the once-traditional canvases transformed into objects of meditative power were here presented in venerative recesses.
The first tagli date to the autumn of 1958 and by 1960 Fontana had executed tagli works in an expansive variety of experimental colours including yellow, orange, red, pink, ochre, turquoise, blue, purple, brown, grey, gold, silver, and black. Against this panoply of pigments, and the variety of slash quantities and arrangements that Fontana explored, the single elongated slash upon a pristine and monumental white canvas was the purest epitomisation of the ideal incarnated by the tagli. Its forms distilled the artist’s great innovation – piercing the canvas – into its most elemental presentation. On a physically formal level, as powerfully articulated in the present work, the single slash preserves the greatest tension within the canvas flesh, heightening the viewer’s perception of contending binaries whose dynamic marriages fill Concetto Spaziale, Attesa with symbolic interaction between light and dark, release and contraction, void and plane. With the tagli, Fontana took great lengths to maintain an immaculately homogeneous paint surface, concentrating all trace of his hand upon the slash. Employing a paint brush and not a roller, this required great craftsmanship and demanded the progressive layering of horizontal and vertical strokes to eradicate inconsistencies and realise a true depth of opacity. Scholar Pia Gottschaler has concluded: “in the development of the tagli, perhaps more than anywhere else, we can see the extraordinary dedication [Fontana] brought to refining the minute details of every aspect of their making…” (Lucio Fontana: The Artist’s Materials, Los Angeles 2012, p. 64). Concetto Spaziale, Attesa exemplifies this process through its pristine and elegantly incised surface.
Contemporaneously in tune with an international political context of technological ambition and progression, Fontana’s oeuvre speaks to the age of space exploration and discovery. With these works Fontana hypothesised overturning accepted norms of three-dimensional Cartesian space by invoking and venturing into the fourth dimension of time. Hence Fontana’s statement that: “the discovery of the Cosmos is that of a new dimension, it is the Infinite: thus I pierce the canvas, which is the basis of all arts and I have created an infinite dimension, an x which for me is the basis for all Contemporary Art” (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York, 2006, p. 19). Though embodying an art historically iconoclastic and destructive act, Concetto Spaziale, Attesa simultaneously invokes a futuristic spirit of evolution to engender an object of votiveworship offered up to an era of conceptual innovation and radical technological progression.
Sotheby's. Contemporary Art Evening Auction. London | 12 févr. 2013 www.sothebys.com