Lucio Fontana ITALIAN / ARGENTINE, 1899-1968

Lucio Fontana is famous for his slashed and punctured canvases. Throughout all his work—which included paintings, ceramic sculptures, and light-based installations—the artist demonstrated a relentless interest in surface and dimensionality; his material explorations helped blur the boundaries between 2D and 3D disciplines. Fontana helped pioneer the Spatialist movement, which attempted to integrate a fourth dimension into visual art. He studied under his father, an Italian sculptor, before attending Milan’s Accademia di Brera. His work has been exhibited in New York, Milan, Zürich, London, Berlin, and Rome, and belongs in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museo Reina Sofía, and the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, among others. Fontana’s innovative theories prefigured later developments in environmental art, performance art, and Arte Povera.