The catalogue raisonné of the works on paper by Lucio Fontana (Rosario de Santa Fé, 1899 - Varese, 1968) is one the most complete, cutting edge publications on this fundamental aspect of the work of one of the leading protagonists of artistic development in the 20th century.
Edited by Luca Massimo Barbero, the catalogue follows a chronological order and is divided into sections devoted to the diverse directions explored by the artist in his wide-ranging creative activities. It offers a new privileged point of view, an original, all-round take on the evolution of Fontana's entire oeuvre. Experimentation on paper was, in fact, Fontana's chosen means to test the richness and novelty of his inspiration. Through his works on paper he constantly verified his insights, both in the embryonic and defining stages of his formal and conceptual discoveries.
The fruit of the monumental project of classifying and documenting the authenticity of the artist's works undertaken by the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, this catalogue raisonné was compiled in collaboration with Nini Ardemagni Laurini and Silvia Ardemagni, and covers four decades of the artist's creative activity by exploring, in parallel, his lines of research and their interaction. It starts with the astonishing corpus of figural works, which already coexisted with his abstract research of the 1930s, and culminates in his original invention of "spatial" art, which led to the creation and development of his highly individual "holes", "environments" and "slashes". The study also presents extensive, heretofore unpublished documentation on Fontana's dialogue with architecture and decoration, up to his experimentation with unusual techniques and materials.
The three-volume catalogue has an introduction by Enrico Crispolti, who edited the artist's Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni (Catalogo Raisonné of Sculptures, Paintings, Environments), and features a critical essay by Luca Massimo Barbero. The essay benefits from the scholar's years of studying, classifying and reorganizing Fontana's works on paper and makes the first exhaustive scientific contribution, accompanied by over 100 colour images, to their systematic historicization.
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