Lucio Fontana (1899)
Italy
Biography :
"Lucio Fontana, Italian painter and sculptor of Argentine origin, was born on February 19, 1899 in Rosario de Santa Fe, Argentina. He died on September 7, 1968 in Comabbio, near Varese, Italy. He is the founder of the space movement.
From 1914 to 1917, Fontana attended the Special Building School in Milan. He joined the army in 1917, then was discharged in 1918, following an injury.
Between the 1920s and 1940s, Lucio Fontana was one of the most innovative sculptors (specializing in ceramics in particular), collaborating closely with avant-garde architects, researching new plastic forms using materials such as porcelain, ceramics, terracotta. , bronze, reinforced concrete, glass, plastic or phosphorescent material.
During the Second World War, he took refuge in Buenos Aires where he launched an "artistic protest" against the war. He won numerous sculpture competitions.
Fontana sculpture
Sculpture by Lucio Fontana "Concetto spaziale Natura" - KMM sculpturepark, Netherlands - photo Gerardus
Fontana published the "Manifesto Blanco" in 1946, literally the "White Manifesto", where he formulated his theories on artistic research, then founded the Spazialismo group a year later.
He is famous for his paintings which, apart from tears, are empty. With a precise gesture, Lucio Fontana splits the canvas: he opens a breach in the space of the painting. Fontana is also the hard fight of a man for whom art is both the relevance of the concept and the capacity to decline this concept.
"I make a hole in the canvas to leave behind the old pictorial formula, painting and the traditional view of art, and I escape symbolically, but also materially from the prison of the flat surface." Lucio Fontana"
(Source, website, Moreeuw)