BOOK:Lucio Fontana-Catalogo ragionato Dell’opera Su Carta, SKIRA Editore
The catalogue raisonné of the works on paper by Lucio Fontana by SKIRA, is one the most complete, cutting edge publications on this fundamental aspect of the work of one of the leading protagonists of artistic development in the 20th century. The catalogue presents more than 5,000 works executed between 1928 and 1968, with individual entries that also offer a bibliographical analysis and overview of exhibitions. The catalogue follows a chronological order and is divided into sections devoted to the diverse directions explored by the artist in his wide-ranging creative activities. It offers a new privileged point of view, an original, all-round take on the evolution of Fontana’s entire oeuvre. Experimentation on paper was, in fact, Fontana’s chosen means to test the richness and novelty of his inspiration. Through his works on paper he constantly verified his insights, both in the embryonic and defining stages of his formal and conceptual discoveries. It starts with the astonishing corpus of figural works, which already coexisted with his abstract research of the 1930s, and culminates in his original invention of “spatial” art, which led to the creation and development of his highly individual “holes”, “environments” and “slashes”. The study also presents extensive, heretofore unpublished documentation on Fontana’s dialogue with architecture and decoration, up to his experimentation with unusual techniques and materials.-Dimitris Lempesis
