The artist of space and time

Expectation, ital. Attesa, is the title of a series of cut paintings that are his trademark today: The Argentinian-born Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) was a visionary avant-gardist who explored the relationship between light, space and material and paved new paths for art: his Ambiente spaziale (spatial installations) from the late 1940s, for example, are considered the first environments in modern art. His immensely complex oeuvre, which goes far beyond the famous cut pictures, is represented by the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal with around 100 works, including figurative and conceptual works, ceramics and spatial installations. Lucio Fontana: Expectation can be seen from October 5, 2024 to January 12, 2025.

As early as 1946, Fontana stated that speed would be the decisive experience of modernity. In view of the development of (electronic) media, his prediction seems to be correct. In that year, Fontana also published his Manifesto bianco (White Manifesto), in which he called for the use of new materials in art and advocated the synthesis of all artistic genres, including music and poetry. The artist, who won the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1966, was a major influence on the Nouveau Réalisme and Arte Povera movements as well as the famous ZERO group of artists.