Not just cuts: drawings on paper by Lucio Fontana on display in Comabbio

An interesting exhibition of drawings by Lucio Fontana (Rosario, Argentina, 1899 - Comabbio, 1968) opens Saturday, Dec. 16, and runs through Jan. 28, 2018, at the Lucio Fontana Hall in Comabbio (Varese). The exhibition, entitled Lucio Fontana. Drawings on Paper 1934 -1965, exhibits forty-five drawings on paper executed by the great master of Spatialism over a period of thirty years: the exhibition will allow visitors to learn about the evolution and importance of this medium in Lucio Fontana’s production. The artist, in an interview by Mario Pancera conducted in 1962, stated, “On Sundays I draw. A model comes here and I fill folder after folder with female nudes. I do it to keep myself in practice. Almost in secret. No one bothers me on holidays.”

The works on display at the exhibition, curated by Massimo Cassani, are all featured in the catalog raisonné of Lucio Fontana’s works on paper compiled in 2013 by the Lucio Fontana Foundation. An exhibition that also has special merit because it is set up in the Lombard town where the artist spent the last years of his career and where he passed away on September 7, 1968. The artist, born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1899, completed his studies in the province of Varese (in fact, his family was originally from there), then moved to Milan and, in 1921, returned to his hometown and finally, six years later, moved back to Milan to enroll at the Brera Academy. Lucio Fontana was born as a sculptor (at Brera he took Adolfo Wildt’s courses, and graduated precisely in sculpture), but he was soon attracted to ceramics (although for him there was no difference between sculpture and ceramics), so much so that he spent several stays in Albissola Marina, where he left several works. The first “spatial concepts,” and thus spatialism, were born instead in the 1940s, while the first “cuts,” his most famous works that Fontana presented in 1959 at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan and then at the Stadler Gallery in Paris, and also in the same year at Documenta in Kassel and at the V Biennial of São Paulo, Brazil, date from 1958.

Admission to the exhibition is free, and the catalog can be purchased directly at the exhibition. Open Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 4 to 6:30 p.m. For information salaluciofontana@comune.comabbio.va.it, or call 0331 968572. The exhibition is sponsored by the City of Comabbio and the Marconi Foundation of Milan and has received the approval of Lucio Fontana Foundation president Nini Laurini.

Image: Lucio Fontana Spatial Concept: small theater (1965)

Not just cuts: drawings on paper by Lucio Fontana on display in Comabbio

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