6 - Lucio Fontana (Italian, 1899-1968)

Lucio Fontana (Italian, 1899-1968) Concetto spaziale, Teatrino - 1965-66 Lacquered wood, acrylic on canvas 110 x 110 cm Signed and titled on verso Provenance: Galeria del Leone, Venice Roger Matthys, Belgium The Robert and Suzanne Pannier Collection, Bruges Published: Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, La Connaissance, Brussels, 1974, vol.II, p.174 Enrico Crispolti, Fonana. Catalogo Generale, Electa, Milan, 1986, p.615, cat.65-66 TE12 (ill.) The Teatrini, created between 1964 and 1966, occupy a distinctive place within Lucio Fontana's late œuvre. Emerging after the Buchi, the Tagliand alongside works such as La Fine di Dio, they represent neither a departure from Spatialism nor a return to figuration, but an expansion of its possibilities. Their appearance coincided with a moment of profound change in the international art world. The 1964 Venice Biennale introduced American Pop Art to a broad European audience through artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Claes Oldenburg. Fontana, always attentive to the most recent artistic developments, responded not by adopting Pop Art's vocabulary wholesale, but by absorbing certain of its concerns into his own. As he remarked, "The Teatrini were a type of 'realistic Spatialism.' A little bit in the fashion of Pop Art things too... but still in my way. They were forms that man imagines in space." This dialogue with Pop Art is evident in the Teatrini. The shaped lacquered wooden frames, produced in collaboration with Dino Gavina, possess the precision and finish of manufactured objects, while their bold silhouettes introduce recognisable forms into a body of work that had long resisted figuration. Yet these elements remain entirely at the service of Spatialism. Rather than abandoning the infinite space explored in the Buchi and Tagli, the Teatrini give it a stage. The lacquered frame projects before the pierced monochrome canvas, establishing a measured distance between object and background in which light, shadow and space become active components of the composition. As Enrico Crispolti observed, "The shaped lacquer frames and the clean grounds of the sky traversed by ordered constellations of holes indicate a new desire to create an objectified configuration of a kind of spatial 'spectacle', which Fontana presents with an almost classical imaginative composure." The theatrical quality suggested by the title is more than a formal device. Throughout his career, Fontana maintained a sustained interest in theatre and stage design, producing scenographic projects alongside his artistic practice. The Teatrini translate this experience into sculptural terms. Their shaped frames function like a proscenium, while the pierced monochrome surface behind becomes an imagined stage on which space itself is performed.