LUCIO FONTANA

How was I to paint this terrible New York?… I took some sheets of shiny metal and set to work, sometimes scratching them vertically to convey the idea of sky-scrapers, sometimes puncturing them with a metal punch, sometimes flexing them to suggest dramatic skies… no other material so successfully captures the sense of this Metropolis made all of glass, of window panes, orgies of light, and the dazzle of metal.

—Lucio Fontana

Concetto spaziale, Attese was created by Lucio Fontana in 1961 as an original work to accompany one of the 50 editions of Michel Tapié’s volume Devenir de Fontana. With its metallic surface, the work is closely connected to the Metalli series (1961–68), which emerged from Fontana’s first visit to New York in November 1961 and the inspiration he found in the city’s intense verticality and metallic skyscrapers. In the present work, two lacerations are cut forcefully through a sheet of aluminum, encircled by a scratched oval shape. The gold surface of the work creates an unpredictable pattern of light which in turn is disrupted by Fontana’s signature cuts.

LUCIO FONTANA
Concetto spaziale, Attese
1961
Cuts on aluminum coated board
10 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches (26.7 x 29.2 cm)
© Fondation Lucio Fontana