A collector’s guide to Lucio Fontana

How did Lucio Fontana lay the foundations for Spatialism?

Born to Italian parents in Rosario de Santa Fé, Argentina, in 1899, Lucio Fontana began his artistic career as a sculptor, working under his father Luigi before setting out on his own. Throughout his early years, Fontana split his time between Argentina and Italy, studying at the Accademia di Brera under Adolfo Wildt and exhibiting his works at the Milanese gallery, Il Milione.

In 1940, he returned to Argentina, in part to escape war-ravaged Europe. It was there, in 1946, that Fontana founded the Altamira academy and, with several of his students, penned the White Manifesto, wherein they stated, ‘Matter, colour, and sound in motion are the phenomena whose simultaneous development makes up the new art,’ laying the foundations for what would become Spazialismo, the Spatialist movement.

Slashing to create an ‘endless void’: an explanation

After the destruction of two world wars, Fontana asked himself, ‘What can I now paint?’ He felt a need to start again, from the beginning.

On returning to Milan in 1948, Fontana embarked on his Concetto spaziale (‘spatial concept’) series, which became signature — layered, monochromatic canvases riddled with buchi (holes) and tagli (cuts), the deep lacerations in the canvases revealing a dark ground within.

Complementing them are series of monochrome ceramics, their surfaces brutally slashed and punctured. Evocative of lunar landscapes, they too are at once rugged and serene.

‘By slashing the canvas to create an endless void, Fontana was able to create a third dimension from which everything else would emerge,’ says the art dealer Axel Vervoordt, who has sold many of the artist’s works over the years, retaining prime examples for his personal collection. ‘It was through my understanding of this concept that I discovered the power of abstract art.’

In time, the works in the slash series were complemented by a suite of light, wood and metal works; some 22 luminous canvases studded with Venetian glass, ‘icons for a new age’ that were created for a 1961 exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi; and a series of pure white works for which Fontana designed special environments for the 1966 Venice Biennale and Documenta IV in Kassel, just before his death in September 1968.

The market for works by Fontana

More than 300 works having passed the $1 million mark at auction since 2000. Among these are the radiant yellow, egg-shaped Concetto spaziale, La Fine di Dio (1964) realised $29,173,000 at Christie’s in New York in 2015 (the current record price for the artist). Another work with the same title from 1963 sold for £16,282,823 in 2018 at Christie’s in London.

More recently, a large, 1960 piece from Fontana’s buchi series, Concetto spaziale sold in 2022 for €15,147,000 at Christie’s in Paris. An iridescent silver canvas from 1960, the work anticipates the artist’s olii (oils) and metalli (metals) produced in response to the cities of Venice and New York between 1961 and 1962.

The current market has been buoyed by a landmark 2014 retrospective of more than 200 Fontana paintings, ceramics, sculptures and installations, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and in 2019, Lucio Fontana: On the Threshold at The Met Firth Avenue in New York.

Fontana created some 2,000 pieces over the course of his career, an output that was considerably less than that of contemporaries such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. While Fontana’s canvases have escalated in price, his editioned works — sculptures and ceramics — are in ever-increasing demand. A unique glazed ceramic, Il Guerriero (The Warrior) (1948), sold at Christie’s in London for £1,362,000 in 2023.

The Avant-Garde(s) Including Thinking Italian sale at Christie’s in Paris takes place on 18 October 2024, with the 20/21 Century Art — Day Sale following on 19 October. Explore Christie’s 20th/21st Century autumn sale season in London and Paris, until 22 October