Lucio Fontana (1899-1968)

Executed in 1958, Concetto spaziale, Forma forms a part of one of Lucio Fontana's rarest series: the Inchiostri, or Inks. It is a mark of the importance of this work that it was shown in so many of the lifetime exhibitions of Fontana's work.
This is in part a reflection of the importance of the Inchiostri themselves: it was in this series, named because of his extensive use of aniline, a derivative of naturally-occurring indigo, that Fontana, at the end of the year that Concetto spaziale, Forma, was created, would first experiment with the slashes, the Tagli, that have since become the best-known part of his output. Concetto spaziale, Forma can be seen both as a lyrical embodiment of Fontana's notions of Spatialism and as a forum in which he could continue to push back its application in art. The undulating forms that he has created, through the collage elements and dyes, have landscape-like resonances, recalling to an extent the pictures of Joan Miró and allowing a suspicion of figuration that would be taken up again in the Teatrini some years later.
Within these forms, the almost rectangular form within which Fontana has placed the rhythmic, punctuation-like lines of holes form a poetic counterpoint to the curves of the rest of the surface. Fontana has allowed the collage elements and the ink itself to dominate the surface, the holes an elegant reminder of the three-dimensionality of the picture, a gentle yet insistent hint of the infinities that lie beyond. With its delicate, deliberately understated modulations of colour and nebula-like forms and the haiku-like progression of holes, Concetto spaziale, Forma is a quiet and intensely resonant paean to Space itself.