Lucio Fontana
Los orígenes

edited by Chiara Barbato and Valentina Spata
from an idea of Alessandro Masi
Rosario (Santa Fe, Argentina), Museo Castagnino + Macro, 21th July–21th August 2019

The exhibition catalogue Lucio Fontana. Los Orígenes focuses on the great protagonist of the Art of the 20th century, insisting on the imprinting of both Italy and Argentina on his man’s and artist’s path, that is, two homes and two images held in mind.

The exhibition, that will take place from the 21st of July until the 21st of August at the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino in Rosario, Lucio Fontana’s hometown, derives from an idea of Alessandro Masi, General Secretary of the Società Dante Alighieri. Therefore, the association is among the institutional subjects that participate to the Integrated Plan, in order to build a single and coherent platform aimed at promoting Italy worldwide: the main occasion of the exhibition will thus be the 83rd Congress of the society in Buenos Aires.

The catalogue evocatively tells the exhibition, where 64 drawings by Lucio Fontana (plus 2 sculptures and a ‘Spatial Concept’) will be shown to the audience, the whole collection coming from a legacy that Teresita, Fontana’s wife, made in 1988 to CSAC (Centre of Studies and Communication Archive) of the University of Parma, and selected according to a specific philological criterion. The drawings, covering almost 20 years of Fontana’s production (1938–59), represent the highest proof of his art, particularly related to his second period in Argentina, from 1940 till 1947. We have to deal with a corpus of pencils and inks on paper that forerun Fontana’s next and more famous phase, that is when his Manifiesto Blanco2 is published (1946) and the ‘holes’, the ‘spatial concepts’ and the ‘cuts’ are invented. The catalogue, with its precious images, can also count on some extensive critical essays, such as those by the two editors of the volume Chiara Barbato and Valentina Spata.

Digital version available on

http://digital.casalini.it/9788874615278