Lucio Fontana

About the Exhibition

The exhibition begins its journey in 1949, the pivotal year that saw the birth of Fontana’s revolutionary Buchi (Holes) series. Initially perceived as a scandalous gesture, the act of piercing the canvas transcended all pictorial limits, opening up a positive, futuristic dimension that connected art with the concept of infinite space. The presentation traces the original conceptual development of the Buchi across his career into the 1960s, including one of the very first and unique perforated papers on canvas, rare terracotta spatial constructions where painting and sculpture uniquely merge, and the late pierced works.

By the late 1950s, this relentless experimentation led to his internationally acclaimed series Concetti Spaziali, Attese (Spatial Concepts, Expectations), famously known as the Tagli (Cuts). For Fontana, who was then in his 60s, these sharp, elegant slits were more than a mere gesture; as he declared: ‘My cuts are a philosophical expression, an act of faith in the infinite, an affirmation of spirituality.’ These iconic Tagli originated in experimental gestures and incisions first made on canvas-backed paper and on canvases treated with highly diluted aniline paint. They later evolved into more precise and conscious cuts executed on canvases prepared with monochromatic water-based paint. In these works, the cut acquired a more clearly defined formal role, becoming a constant point of reference for the avant-garde artists of the 1960s. The exhibition brings together a significant selection of works from this series, alongside the emblematic Quanta, created between 1959 and 1960, a series of shaped canvases, slashed or more rarely perforated, that anticipated the American shaped canvas movement and exemplified absolute freedom in spatial arrangement.

Throughout the presentation, the installation underscores Fontana’s masterful exploration of matter, light, and space through the diverse and multifaceted series of works that define his Spatialist practice. Works utilizing pure white, deep black and metallic colors like gold and silver react dynamically with the surrounding environment activating changing perceptions of light, surface, and space.

Presented in close dialogue with these spatial paintings are the Nature (Natures) series, conceived between 1959 and 1960 and comprising a group of bronze sculptures of geodesic, organic forms resembling terrestrial or extraterrestrial spheres. Modeled and punctured with immense physical effort by the artist to represent the unknown, these sculptures embody what Fontana described as ‘still forms with a dream of bringing inert matter to life.’ Together, they showcase the exhaustive richness of his Spatialist period, confirming Fontana as a true precursor of our contemporary world.

Hauser & Wirth Publishers

‘Lucio Fontana’ is the first widely available introduction to Lucio Fontana’s practice in Simplified Chinese, offering Chinese audiences a long-overdue opportunity to discover the full scope of the artist’s groundbreaking work. Published on the occasion of an exhibition of Fontana’s work at Hauser & Wirth in Hong Kong, this new monograph marks the gallery’s third collaboration with Fondazione Lucio Fontana and curator Luca Massimo Barbero following the exhibitions and accompanying publications ‘Lucio Fontana: Walking the Space; Spatial Environments, 1948-1968’ (2021) and ‘Lucio Fontana: Sculpture’ (2022).

Edited by Barbero, a leading Fontana’s scholar, the book provides a detailed account of the artist’s influential career, richly illustrated with artwork and archival images. Over four chapters, texts by Barbero and Maria Villa, the Vice President of the Foundation, track the evolution of Fontana’s work, beginning with his early days as an artist in Argentina and Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, moving through the birth of Spatialism in the 1940s and the development of his pioneering Ambienti Spaziali (Spatial Environments) in the 1950s, and concluding with the innovative late works created in his final decade, including his iconic slashed canvases. Offering further insight into the artist’s theories, aims and intentions are a selection of Fontana’s writings, including manifestos, interviews, and articles, between 1939 and 1967, which have been translated into Simplified Chinese for the very first time.