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FONTANA Lucio (1899-1968) was an Italian painter and sculptor, founder of the spatial movement. Since 1949, by breaking the canvas with holes and cuts, he overcame the traditional distinction between painting and sculpture. The space ceased to be the object of representation according to the conventional rules of perspective. The very surface of the canvas, interrupting itself in reliefs and recesses, entered into a direct relationship with real space and light. His monochrome canvases, often spray-painted, bear the mark of the precise, confident gestures of the artist who, leaving his brushes behind, handles razor blades. Everything is played on the shadows with which, especially the grazing light, underlines the solutions of continuity.
Born in Argentina, where he lived up to six years and returned during the Second World War, Fontana reached his poetics by meditating on the lesson of the Baroque, in which, as he split the figures seem to leave the plane and continue in space. Of the spatialist movement he was not only the founder, but the only valid representative, soon affirmed also on the international level. Some of his monochrome canvases must be understood as openly provocative gestures which, such as the holes and cuts, scandalized the public also for the apparent ease with which it seems possible to remake them. In fact, there were many counterfeiters, but few with an equally sure sign. Fontana, as a precaution, wrote senseless sentences on the back of each canvas, a simple appiglo for a calligraphic expertise. Works * The sky of Venice * Midday in Piazza San Marco * Spatial concept