14 Facts About Lucio Fontana

Lucio Fontana spent the first years of his life in Argentina and then was sent to Italy in 1905, where he stayed until 1922, working as a sculptor with his father, and then on his own.

In 1927 Lucio Fontana returned to Italy and studied alongside Fausto Melotti under the sculptor Adolfo Wildt, at Accademia di Brera from 1928 to 1930.

Lucio Fontana devised the generic title Concetto spaziale for these works and used it for almost all his later paintings.

Lucio Fontana then created an elaborate neon ceiling called "Luce spaziale" in 1951 for the Triennale in Milan.

In 1959 Lucio Fontana exhibited cut-off paintings with multiple combinable elements, and began Nature, a series of sculptures made by cutting a gash across a sphere of terracotta clay, which he subsequently cast in bronze.

Around 1960, Lucio Fontana began to reinvent the cuts and punctures that had characterized his highly personal style up to that point, covering canvases with layers of thick oil paint applied by hand and brush and using a scalpel or utility knife to create great fissures in their surface.

Lucio Fontana manipulated the paint with his fingers and various instruments to make furrows, sometimes including scattered fragments of Murano glass.

Lucio Fontana was invited by Michel Tapie to exhibit the works at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York.

Lucio Fontana created a prolific amount of graphic work with abstract motifs as well as figures, little-known in the art world, at the same time as he was producing his abstract perforated works.

Lucio Fontana was the sculptor of the bust of Ovidio Lagos, founder of the La Capital newspaper, in Carrara marble.

Lucio Fontana had his first solo exhibitions at Galleria del Milione, Milan, in 1931.

Lucio Fontana participated in the Bienal de Sao Paulo and in numerous exhibitions around the world.

Since 1930 Lucio Fontana's work had been exhibited regularly at the Venice Biennale, and he represented Argentina various times; he was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale of 1966.

Lucio Fontana's jewelry is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.