Beschreibung:

Lucio Fontana Concetto spaziale, Attesa 1964 waterpaint on canvas 25 3/4 x 21 1/4 in. (65.4 x 54 cm.) Signed, titled and inscribed "L. Fontana "Concetto Spaziale ATTESA" para el amigo Soto ciao, oggi vado dal Dottore, a farmi visitare,'" on the reverse.
Provenance Jesús Rafael Soto gift from the artist Galerie Pierre, Stockholm Private Collection, Milan Christie's, London, The Italian Sale 20th Century Art, October 16, 2006, lot 236 Private Collection Christie's, London, Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, June 28, 2011, lot 46 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Stockholm, Galerie Pierre, Fontana, February – March, 1971 Literature Fontana, exh. cat., Galerie Pierre, Stockholm, 1971, no. 14 (illustrated) E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana catalogue raisonné des peintures, sculptures et environnements spatiaux, vol. II, Brussels 1974, no. 64 T 42, p. 152 (illustrated) E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana catalogo generale, vol. II, Milan 1986, no. 64 T 42, p. 523 (illustrated) E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, vol. II, Milan 2006, no. 64 T 42, p. 713 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay “I say dimension because I cannot think what other word to use. I make a hole in the canvas in order to leave behind me the old pictorial formulae, the painting and the traditional view of art – and I escape symbolically, but also materially, from the prison of the flat surface.” -Lucio Fontana 1968 While Lucio Fontana had already written his most famous treatises on his art in 1947 with the advent of his manifestos (which would publish until 1952), he stayed true to the spirits of these writings until his death in 1968. In his Technical Manifesto of 1951, Fontana wrote, “The representation of known forms and repetitive story-telling mean nothing to the men of our century, who have been formed by this materialism. This is why abstraction, at which we have arrived gradually by way of formalization, was born. But abstraction does not meet the needs of the men of today. A change is therefore needed, a change in essence and form. We have to go beyond painting, sculpture, poetry, music. What is now wanted is an art based on the necessity of a new vision…”(from Lucio Fontana ed. Gilbert Brownstone, Paris, 1970, p. 46) Fontana’s magnificent illusion would coalesce in the coming years in the form of his most celebrated series: the Concetto Spaziale. The present lot, Concetto Spaziale, Attesa, 1964, is a glowing representation of Fontana’s work near the end of his life, at a point when his technical perfection and confidence in his medium makes for a marvelous artistic coda. Fontana’s manifestos served less to outline the work of his final twenty years and more to articulate Fontana’s spiritual and scientific aims for his art. Fontana’s cultural narrative posited that the “new vision” in question was a new art form entirely, a form that would meet the artistic needs of those who made and observed it without question. Hence, he endeavored to find a middle ground between painting and sculpture, one that would lend additional dimensions to contemporary definitions of visual art. His first Concetto Spaziale of the late 1940s employed holes as their defining characteristic, rebelling against the inherited tradition that the canvas was defined as the ground on which the picture was to be presented. This radical post-modernist vision of art—to employ the medium itself as the primary vehicle for expression—was to create waves throughout the artistic community, shocking both critics and viewers alike. But Fontana’s project was to evolve further in its visionary quest. Beginning in the middle of the 1950s, Fontana began using either a scalpel or a Stanley knife to slice incisions into his canvases, then using black gauze as the backdrop, inviting the observer to contemplate a new dimension in a new form. Peering into the infinite yet receding cosmos of Fontana’s new creations, one comprehends a paradoxical illusion of two parts. The first is a space beyond the canvas itself. The second, however, is a sculptural finality to the form of the canvas. In creating this dichotomous relationship, Fontana was able to forge the perfect model of his Manifesto’s