Fontana is looking for something else... rationalist and modern
tones, with a touch
of sensuality and baroque taste.
—Paolo Campiglio
Concetto spaziale, forma (1957) belongs to a series of eight sc
ulptures that Lucio
Fontana created in 1957‹ and 1958, many of which were featur
ed in the artist’s
solo pr
esentation at the 29th Venice Biennale in 1958. These works mar
k a rare
instance in his oeuvre, unique in comparison to his more numero
us ceramic
sculptur
es. Comprising flat, biomorphic, cut-out shapes balanced on thi
n stalks,
they recall contempor
aneous sculptures by Alexander Calder
, as well as the work
of Constantin Brâncuşi and Joan Miró, both of whom Fontana was
acquainted
with. Fontana famously said that Brâncuşi had “increased the va
lue of matter in a
sculptural and also spatial sense”—and in many ways, the latter
’s 1928
masterpiece Bird in Space is particularly resonant with the pre
sent work.
Here, a floating shape—punctuated with Fontana’s signature bucc
hi, or “holes”—
sit gracefully on a narrow support, evoking an orchid in bloom,
a bird with
outstretched wings, or a stingray floating through water
, motifs Fontana
expressed an interest for during his early career. This form re
curs across his
oeuvre, including in paintings and drawings, resulting in an en
igmatic body of
works that invite parallels with Jean Dubuffet’s art brut. In e
ach instance, its raw-
edged presence is distinctly primal and corpulent, exemplary of
what art critic
Rosalind Krauss has discussed as Fontana’s radical “base materi
alism.”
Fontana trained as a sculptor in the 1920s, before the advent o
f space travel
prompted him to conceive his works as “concetti spaziali” (spat
ial concepts). In
the present work, the two join hands: the sculpture’s head tilt
s towards the sky,
its tail extending either side like a comet. Organic and otherw
orldly, it is a
power
ful emblem of his belief that art should go beyond the earthly
realm, and
point us towards the unknown. Today, three of the eight sculptu
res are held in
public institutions—Museum Ludwig, Cologne, the Museum Jorn, Si
lkeborg,
Denmark, and the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan.