3 November 2022 - 4 February 2023
Lucio Fontana’s sculptures at Hauser & Wirth gallery, New York
Open until next 4 February, Hauser & Wirth present the second in a trilogy of exhibitions dedicated to the late Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana, considered among the 20th century’s most inventive artists. Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, in collaboration with the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, and focused on Fontana’s prolific breakthroughs and experiments in the medium of sculpture, this exhibition will fill the gallery’s uptown location at 32 East 69th Street, the very same address where, in 1961, Fontana’s first solo show in the US was presented at the galleries of the legendary art dealers Martha Jackson and David Anderson.
‘Lucio Fontana. Sculpture’ will feature over 80 works on loan from important institutions and museums, the Fondazione Lucio Fontana and both private and public collections and will shine a light on a critical dimension of the artist’s revolutionary practice that is rarely explored in depth outside of Europe.
While perhaps best known in the United States for his ‘Tagli’ (Slashes)—the slashed canvases that summarized and reinterpreted decades of research surrounding space and the conceptual value of gesture—sculpture was integral to Fontana’s artistic project and pivotal to its evolution. Having experimented with the medium from the beginning to the very end of his career, Fontana used sculpture as an opportunity to test, and put into practice, the exchange between form, color, matter and space, through a dialectical relationship between abstract and figurative, spatial and baroque.
‘Lucio Fontana. Sculpture’ will be accompanied by a new, fully illustrated catalogue from Hauser & Wirth Publishers, laid out by the designer Leonardo Sonnoli and edited by leading Fontana scholar and scientific advisor to the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Luca Massimo Barbero. The book, realized in collaboration with the Fondazione, will be the first comprehensive monograph in English dedicated to Fontana’s sculptural works and includes a foreword by Paolo Laurini and essays by art historians Cristina Beltrami and Maria Villa, as well as an essay by the curator.
This project is part of the Fondazione Lucio Fontana’s effort to study and introduce new audiences to Fontana’s sculptural output, which will culminate with the release in November 2022 of the catalogue raisonné of ceramic sculptures (Skira) curated by Luca Massimo Barbero in collaboration with the Fondazione.
To Hauser & Wirth Gallery NY website ︎︎︎