Spatial concept

The Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid (Spain).

Acrylic on canvas.

One of the first paintings by Fontana, in which he violated the flat and even surface of the canvas, piercing it with a knife. Instead of creating the illusion of the image by applying paint to the canvas, the artist gave viewers an opportunity to look into the space behind the painting, which turns out to be unexpectedly deep and mysterious, as if the painting is a portal to a completely different dimension. Punctures themselves are located randomly on the surface but still create a certain vortex pattern that directs the look into the center of the canvas. Lucio Fontana preferred to call his works not paintings but “spatial concepts” that expand and change the space around him.