Carriera “barocca” di Fontana

A new overview of the artistic development of Lucio Fontana from the ’30s to the beginning of the ’60s introduces the exhibition dedicated to him by Amedeo Porro Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Milan. The show entitled “Carriera ‘barocca’ di Fontana/’Baroque’ career of Fontana” holds 7 sculptures, 9 works on canvas and a series of 7 designs on wood. This is the same title of the book by Enrico Crispolti that collects Fontana’s writings and the long correspondence between the artist and Crispoldi, published by Skira/Amedeo Porro Arte Moderna e Contemporanea for the exhibition. So the title of the book is “Carriera ‘barocca’ di Fontana. Taccuino critico 1959-2004 e Carteggio 1958-1967/’Baroque’ career of Fontana. Critical notebooks 1959-2004 and Epistolar exchange 1958-1967” whose publication (together with the exhibition) establishes a unique and extraordinary event about Fontana, a very particular contribution (in works and writings) to a further knowledge of one of the major artists of the 20th Century.
The exhibition, which holds some never seen before works created between 1931 and 1962, starts with a splendid plaster sculpture “Campione olimpionico (Atleta in attesa)/Olympic champion (Waiting athlete)” of 1931-1932, where the first attempts at expressivity of the matter and the role of colour can be read, to the “Concetto spaziale/Spacial Concept” of 1959, one of his first experimental cuts on canvas-baked paper.