Lucio Fontana Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Lucio Fontana (Rosario di Santa Fé 1899 - Varese 1968) At the age of six he moved with his family to Italy, to Milan, to attend school. While attending the School for Building Masters, he began his apprenticeship as an artist in his father's workshop. Read the full biography

Lucio Fontana Biography

Lucio Fontana (Rosario di Santa Fé 1899 - Varese 1968) At the age of six he moved with his family to Italy, to Milan, to attend school. While attending the School for Building Masters, he began his apprenticeship as an artist in his father's workshop. In 1917 he interrupted his studies and left for the front as a volunteer, but was wounded and discharged with the medal for military valour. He graduated and enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, but, after two years, in 1922, he returned to Argentina where he initially worked for his father, but soon opened his own sculpture studio. In 1928 he returned to Italy to resume his studies at Brera, where he graduated in 1930, following the courses of Adolfo Wildt. In the 1930s Lucio Fontana followed his personal vein by creating works between the figurative and the abstract. Increasingly appreciated by major critics, she participates in the Milan Triennale, the Venice Biennale, the Rome Quadrennial; he exhibits several times at the Galleria del Milione. In Albissola Fontana dedicated himself to ceramics and, in 1937, to the Sèvres factory where he created small sculptures, which he exhibited and sold successfully in Paris. At the beginning of 1940 Lucio Fontana returned to Buenos Aires, where he worked passionately and participated in and won various sculpture competitions. In 1947, he founded the "Spatial Movement" and, with other artists and intellectuals, published the "First Manifesto of Spatialism". In 1949 he exhibited "the spatial environment with black light" at the Galleria del Naviglio, a source of great enthusiasm and dissent. In search of a third dimension, Fontana experimented with the world of painting, creating his first paintings by piercing the canvases, starting the cycle of “Holes.” During his first three-dimensional painting experiments, Lucio Fontana continued his activity as a ceramist in Albissola and began to collaborate with avant-garde architects. In the 1950s he continued to work intensely on the "Holes" cycle, but also used glass, starting the "Stones" cycle. Going ever further in experimentation, Fontana, in addition to making holes, applies colour, inks, pastels, collages, sequins and fragments of glass to the canvases. In 1957, in a series of works on canvas paper, in addition to holes and graffiti, the first "Cuts" appear, barely mentioned. At this point Lucio Fontana is known and appreciated all over the world: he participates in international events at an increasingly intense pace; large museums and galleries purchase his works. In the 1960s Lucio Fontana started the "Oils" cycle by creating large-scale ones inspired by Venice, which he then exhibited in a solo exhibition in New York. His creativity leads the painter to create the works of the "Metalli" cycle and also to create jewels and designs "Space Dresses". He collaborated with the architect Carlo Scarpa in the design and creation of his own white room at the 1966 Venice Biennale, where with his white canvases marked by a single vertical cut, he won the first prize for painting. Demonstrating that he can interpret art in any form, Lucio Fontana designs scenes and costumes for the ballet "Portrait of Don Quixote", on stage at the Teatro la Scala, in Milan. In 1967 the new cycle of "Ellipses" began, monochrome works in lacquered wood with holes and some sculptures, in lacquered metal, on stems. At the beginning of 1968 Lucio Fontana, due to poor health, restored the old family house in Comabbio, Varese, where he retired, continuing to work on the "Olii", the "Buchi" and above all the "Tagli".