Italy’s Largest Bank, The Met Showcase Spatialism Pioneer Lucio Fontana In Historic U.S. Exhibitions

Punctures forced through the front and the back of acrylic on paper glued to canvas engage the eye in an intoxicating dance, as the bold, heavy, and textured brushstrokes send the viewer on a clockwise journey of Lucio Fontana’s “Spatial Concept” (Concetto Spaziale).

The groundbreaking 1951 masterpiece by the painter, sculptor, and theorist regarded as the founder of Spatialism, a movement which sought to synthesize color, sound, space, and movement, is among 23 work on public display at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York until March 6.

“Spatial Explorations: Lucio Fontana and the Avant-Garde in Milan in the 50s and 60s” is co-hosted by Italy’s largest bank Intesa Sanpaolo Spa and runs parallel to The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s retrospective “Lucio Fontana: On the Threshold.” Intesa Sanpaolo has loaned two critical Fontana works to The Met for view until April 14.

Known for his gashes, cuts, slashes, and punctures, Fontana was “not expressing a form of aggression,” Francesco Tedeschi, the curator, said in an interview while perusing the painting. “The most important form is the circle and the spiral you can see as a concentric form,” he said of “Spatial Concept.” “This one is my favorite.”

Besides four Fontana masterworks, the exhibition highlights diverse and captivating works such as a bubbling polysterene and kaolin from Pioro Manzoni’s brushstroke-shunning series “Achrome”(1963), and Enrico Castellani’s mesmerizing acrylic on introflexed and extroflexed canvas “White Surface” (before 1968). The art explores “the theme of the relationship between space and painting,” said Michele Coppola, Head of Art, Culture, and Heritage at Intesa Sanpaolo and Director of Gallerie d’Italia (the bank’s three museums).

Throughout his career, Fontana honed various techniques by piercing and carving two-dimensional paintings with a scalpel or Stanley knife to introduce space behind the canvas and fabricate illusion and depth.

Three of Fontana’s environments have been reconstructed for The Met exhibition, including two at The Met Breuer, and a third at The Met Fifth Avenue. In tandem, El Museo del Barrio in New York is presenting Fontana’s final Spatial Environment at Documenta 4, in Kassel (1968), also until April 14.

Some of Fontana’s Spatial Environments were created in pre-existing architectural contexts, while others are independent works built for exhibitions. Fontana collaborated with famous Milanese architects to design new buildings to reconstruct the city after the war. He worked with many architects during his career, including Luciano Baldessari, a leading figure in the in the Futurist movement along with contemporaries such as Fortunato Depero.

This is a tremendous moment in New York for Fontana. It’s been more than four decades since the U.S. has seen a major retrospective of the influential Italian master, who was born in 1899 in Argentina to Italian immigrant parents. The only son of sculptor Luigi Fontana (1865-1946), he spent his early years in Italy and returned to Argentina in 1905, where he worked both alongside his father and on his own until 1922.

In 1926, he took part in the first exhibition of Nexus, a group of emerging Argentine artists, and by 1931 he had his first solo exhibitions at Galleria del Milione in Milan. In 1961, French art critic, curator, and collector Michel Tapié organized Fontana’s first U.S. show at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis hosted the globally-renowned artist’s first solo exhibition at an American museum in 1966. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presented his first major international retrospective in 1977.

The Intesa Sanpaolo collection celebrates Italian history and culture, with far-reaching pieces including historic Italian artifacts, paintings, sculptures, Russian Orthodox icons, and American modernist works, acquired by independent banks throughout Italy over two centuries. The massive collection was born as the smaller banks joined the Intesa Sanpaolo group and is housed in museums in Naples, Vicenza and Milan, collectively known as the Gallerie d’Italia. The Milan site is located across from the 18^th century opera house La Scala.

“Protecting Italy’s cultural heritage is particularly important,” His Excellency Armando Varricchio, Italy’s ambassador to the U.S., told an overflow crowd at the Institute’s press preview. “Fontana was a Renaissance man (who) continues to expand the boundaries of knowledge. I connect art with the great experience that I can see everywhere when I travel in this country. Fontana lived in an era of technological development and scientific discovery amid the race for the moon.”

Intesa Sanpaolo is actively involved in multiple efforts to restore and promote art and make it accessible to schoolchildren, who visit the group’s museums for free. The Met and the bank’s Naples museum have also swapped Caravaggio paintings.

“The collaboration between a public institution and a large bank is an unequivocal sign of how the idea of an integrated promotion of our country and our culture has taken great steps forward,” said Giorgio van Straten, an Italian novelist, librettist, playwright, editor, translator, critic, and director of the Italian Cultural Institute.

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