Lucio Fontana

Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) was born in Rosario de Santa Fé in Argentina and raised in Milan. He moved back to Argentina in 1922, working as a sculptor in his father's studio for several years. In 1926, his work was shown in the first exhibition of Nexus, a group of young Argentinian artists. When he returned to Milan in 1928, Fontana studied at the Academia di Belle Arti di Brera. His first solo exhibition was held at Galleria Il Milione in Milan in 1931. In 1935 he went to Paris, joining the Abstraction-Création group. In 1939, he became a member of Corrente, a Milan-based group of expressionist artists, while intensifying his collaborations with architects. In 1940 he moved to Buenos Aires, where he founded, along with some of his students, the Academia de Altamira in 1946, from which the Manifiesto Blanco group emerged. He returned to Milan in 1947 and, together with a group of writers and philosophers, signed the Primo Manifesto dello Spazialismo. The year 1949 marked a turning point in Fontana's career, when he created his first series of paintings in which he punctured the canvas with buchi, small holes. In the early 1950s, he participated in Italian Art Informel exhibitions. During this decade, he explored working with various effects, such as slashing and perforating, in both painting and sculpture. The artist went to New York in 1961, where his work was exhibited at the Martha Jackson Gallery. In 1966 he designed opera sets and costumes for La Scala in Milan. In the last year of his career, Fontana became interested in the staging of his work in the many exhibitions that honored him worldwide. Fontana died in 1968 in Comabbio, Italy.