«Catalogue raisonné of the works on paper» by Lucio Fontana
Wednesday, November 20th, at 6pm
Sala Fontana, Museo del Novecento
via Marconi 1 (corner Piazza Duomo), Milan
On Wednesday, November 20th, at 6pm, in the Sala Fontana at the Museo del Novecento in Milan, curator Luca Massimo Barbero will present the first Catalogue raisonné of the works on paper by Lucio Fontana (Rosario de Santa Fe, 1899 – Varese, 1968). The Catalogue is published by Skira.
The Catalogue raisonné of the works on paper by Lucio Fontana is one the most complete, cutting edge publications on this fundamental aspect of the work of one of the leading protagonists of artistic development in the twentieth century.
Edited by Luca Massimo Barbero, the catalogue follows a chronological order and isdivided into sections devoted to the diverse directions explored by the artist in his wide-ranging creative activities. It offers a new privileged point of view, an original, all-round take on the evolution of Fontana’s entire oeuvre.
Experimentation on paper was, in fact, Fontana’s chosen means to test the richness and novelty of his inspiration. Through his works on paper he constantly verified his insights,
both in the embryonic and defining stages of his formal and conceptual discoveries.
The result of the monumental work of archival documentation and ascertainment ofauthenticity carried out by the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, the Catalogue raisonné,produced in collaboration with Nini Ardemagni Laurini and Silvia Ardemagni, covers
four decades of the artist’s creative activity. Divided into three volumes with anintroductory preface by Enrico Crispolti, editor in chief of the catalogues of Lucio Fontana’s work, it presents an essay by Luca Massimo Barbero constituting an initial scholarly contribution
to the systematic historicization of the work on paper.
Altogether, the catalogue is comprised by 1200 pages, divided in three volumes and includes around 6000 works produced between 1928 and 1968, complete with descriptions including bibliography and exhibitions.
From the surprising corpus of figurative drawings produced parallel to the abstract work as from the 1930s, we arrive at the original invention of Spatial Art and the birth of the series
of Buchi (Holes), Ambienti Spaziali (Spatial Environments) and Tagli (Cuts).
The study also presents the first-ever extensive documentation of the artist’s dialogue with architecture and decoration to the point of experimentation of unusual materials and techniques, thus offering scholars, collectors, gallery owners and museum curators an essential and up-to-date tool of knowledge for Fontana’s work.
Speakers include:
Bernard Blistène
Director of the Department of Cultural Development,
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Enrico Crispolti
Editor in chief of the catalogues of Lucio Fontana’s work
Vittorio Gregotti
Architect
Luca Massimo Barbero
Curator of the Catalogue raisonné
