Concetto spaziale

1958

Aniline on canvas

200 x 200 cm (78 3/4 x 78 3/4 in.)

A large two-meter by two-meter canvas is dotted with black ink dots, sometimes punctured. The dots are shaped into two ovals: one is dissolving and the other is regularly filled. The composition of the painting, whose concept and pace is dictated by the two pure forms shown each in a different state, contrasts with the repetitive, compulsive gesture that caused it.

Concetto Spaziale is the fruit of Lucio Fontana's spatialist investigations, which he theorized in his Manifesto blanco (white manifesto), in 1946. The artist sought to abolish the illusory space of the canvas and to replace it with a real space that is notably materialized through punctures and lacerations. In this painting, Fontana uses for the first time the oval, a symbolic, magnetic form.

Concetto Spaziale was shown for the first time in 2006 at the Where Are We Going? exhibition at Palazzo Grassi, in Venice.
Exhibitions
Lucio Fontana's other artwork