“With the slash I invented a formula that I don’t think can be further perfected. I managed with this formula to give the spectator an impression of spatial calm, of cosmic rigor, of serenity in infinity…”
—Lucio Fontana

Taking a blade to waterpainted canvas, Lucio Fontana slashes open modernist conceptions of painting in Concetto spaziale, Attese, 1964. Though he began the Attese series in 1958, the present example dates to the height of Fontana’s career and anticipates his achievement of the Grand Prize for Painting at the 33^rd Venice Biennale in 1966. The formal simplicity belies a richness of philosophical and art historical meaning. With five diagonal cuts across a vibrant red canvas that peel open into a black space beyond, Concetto spaziale, Attese pierces through centuries of painting mores, in a work that synthesizes philosophical and artistic innovations from the Old Masters to Abstract Expressionists. The bright red waterpaint stands in contrast with Fontana’s dark, black slashes, emphasizing, in tonal juxtaposition, Fontana’s bold rupture with the painted tradition.

 

Art critic Clement Greenberg wrote in 1960 that flatness was the defining characteristic of modern painting. While Old Masters preserved the flat surface of the picture plane “underneath and above the most vivid illusion of three-dimensional space,” Modernists sought an inverse effect. Per Greenberg, in a modern (often abstract) painting, “[o]ne is made aware of the flatness… before, instead of after, being made aware of what that flatness contains.”ⁱ Fontana, with his Concetto spaziale (“spatial concept”) series, opens up a third option: a painting that, by means of its ruptured surface, paradoxically emphasizes the flatness of the canvas, and reveals that flatness as an illusion.

 

The dynamism of Fontana’s work, Concetto spaziale, Attese included, derives from the artist’s leading role in the development of Spatialism, a Post-War artistic attitude that emphasized how new technologies and scientific and philosophical developments impacted artistic production. As Fontana and his peers wrote in the Manifesto Blanco of 1946, art needed “a change in both essence and form. It is necessary to transcend painting, sculpture, poetry, and music. We require a greater art, which will be consistent with the demands of the new spirit.”ⁱⁱ

 

In other words, Fontana sought to add a new, philosophical dimension to art, which found its physical expression in the shift from a two-dimensional to three-dimensional canvas in his Concetto spaziale series. He began with the buchi works, wherein he poked holes in the canvas, and culminated with his tagli, or slashes, as seen in Concetto spaziale, Attese. Creating ruptures in the painted surface, for Fontana, was a way to transcend the genres and traditions of the past, in addition to the contemporary trends in abstraction.

 

To create Concetto spaziale, Attese, Fontana began with vibrant red waterpaint, a water-based housepaint, carefully applied in layers so that no brushstrokes were visible. From there, while the canvas was still wet, he used a blade to slice the tagli, which he then eased open, further, with the flat of his hand. A friend of the artist described this gesture, this easeful opening, as a “caress” of the canvas, though popular analysis sees the tagli as a more violent, even iconoclastic gesture.ⁱⁱⁱ Indeed, the slash, the blade tearing through canvas, is a dynamic motion, akin to the bold action painting contemporary to Fontana’s practice.

 

However, where abstract action painting centered on the emotional expression of the artist, Concetto spaziale, Attese seeks a more universal, even Romantic sense of the sublime in painting. Fontana’s process, of gently opening the canvas to reveal another dimension, recalls the bible story of doubting Thomas, popularly recreated by Old Master painters, such as Fontana’s fellow Italian, Caravaggio, for centuries. In the story, Thomas, one of the apostles, cannot believe that Jesus has risen from the dead until he places his hand inside the spear wound in Christ’s side. The spectator feels the urge, like Thomas, to reach through Concetto spaziale, Attese and touch the sublime. Indeed, as Fontana once said, the tagli “give the spectator an impression of spatial calm, of cosmic rigor, of serenity in infinity…”^iv

 

Art historian Sarah Whitfield writes that Fontana’s tagli “were not just gashes punched through a canvas, but a way of making the viewer look beyond the physical fact of the painting, to what Fontana called ‘a free space.’”^v The concept of “free space” exists both as a representation of infinite space without boundaries, and the philosophical space of free, wandering thought. Fontana emphasized this philosophical third dimension, aesthetically, by placing black tape across the back of each tagli, darkening the space behind the cuts like a mysterious void, or black hole. Indeed, the astronomical parallel is significant, as Fontana was inspired by the Space Race, and the daring scientific explorations that pushed the boundaries of the known world in the 1960s. Concetto spaziale, Attese thus ties philosophical, technological, and artistic innovations together in one. It is a pure expression of Spatialism, a painting for its present moment.

 

Collector’s Digest

• The red color of Concetto spaziale, Attese is among the most coveted for Fontana collectors. The top three Attese works at auction have all been this hue.

• Dating to 1964, Concetto spaziale, Attese comes from the peak of Fontana’s career. The top ten Attese works at auction all date between 1963-1966.

• Examples of the Concetto spaziale, Attese series can be found in the best public and private modern art collections worldwide, including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Kunstmuseum Basel, and The National Museum of Art, Tokyo.

 

 

ⁱ Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,” 1960, in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. 4, ed., John O’Brian, Chicago, p. 87.

ⁱⁱ Lucio Fontana et al., “Manifesto Blanco (White Manifesto),” 1946, 391, accessed Jul. 2023, online.

ⁱⁱⁱ Sarah Whitfield, Lucio Fontana, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 2000, p. 31.

^iv  Fontana, quoted in Giorgio Bocca, “Il taglio è il taglio: Incontro con Lucio Fontana, il vincitore di Venezia,” Il Giorno, Jul. 6, 1966, accessed Sep. 2023, online.

^v  Whitfield, 14.