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Dimensions: 178 by 123cm.
70 by 48 1/2 in.
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Provenance: Marlborough Galleria d'Arte, Rome
Richard Himmel, Winnetka
Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art, Part One, 2 December 1993, lot 30
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
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Exhibited: Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Instituto Torcuato di Tella, Lucio Fontana, 1966, no. 48, illustrated
Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; Austen, University of Texas Art Museum, Lucio Fontana : The Spatial Concept of Art, 1966, no. 54
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum; Eindhoven, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Lucio Fontana - Concetti Spaziali, 1967, no. 54
Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Fontana, 1967, no. 41
Stockholm, Moderna Museet, Fontana : Ideer om Rymden, 1967, no. 41
Hannover, Kestner Gesellschaft, Lucio Fontana, 1968, no. 41
Ferrara, Palazzo Dei Diamanti, Fontana, 1994-95, p. 131
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Literature: Minneapolis Tribune, 15 January 1966, illustrated
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana Catalogue Raisonné, Brussels 1974, Vol. II, p. 136, no. 63 FD 14, illustrated
Il Margutta, 4 April 1975, p. 5, illustrated
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana Catalogo Generale, Milan 1986, Vol. II, p. 467, no. 63 FD 14, illustrated
Enrico Crispolti, Ed., Fontana, Milan 1999, p. 216, no. 229, illustrated in colour
Enrico Crispolti, Ed., Centenario di Lucio Fontana, Milan 1999, p. 56
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Notes: "I do not want to make a painting; I want to open up space, create a new dimension, tie in the cosmos, as it endlessly expands beyond the confining plane of the picture. With my innovation of the hole pierced through the canvas in repetitive formations, I have not attempted to decorate a surface, but on the contrary; I have tried to break its dimensional limitations. Beyond the perforations, a newly gained freedom of interpretations awaits us, but also, and just as inevitably, the end of art." (Lucio Fontana in Exhibition Catalogue, Minneapolis, Walker Art centre, Lucio Fontana, 1966)
The series that marks the pinnacle of Fontana's career he prophetically named La Fine Di Dio, which translates as 'the end of God'. Within the embryonic form of an oval - a universal symbol of birth and regeneration - he was able to unleash the dramatic force of his signature rupture in full maturity, bringing together many of his earlier ideas in harmonious fusion. Like his bucchi and attese, the expressive punctured holes breaking through the canvas were intended as gestural metaphors, windows into a boundless and dimensionless space beyond man's intellectual capacity to understand, and subsequently beyond his concept of God.
With the thick, rosy perfection of its bright pink monochrome punctured by a spectacular procession of expressive holes cut deep into the canvas, Concetto Spaziale, La Fine Di Dio immediately presents a contrasting juxtaposition of emotions. The highly symbolic and joyful colour enhances the theme of generation and growth, and like volcanic craters erupting on a barren landscape that God has long forsaken, the violation of the perfect oval-shape is a metaphor for life and death, creation and destruction, order and chaos. Executed over an eighteen-month period of enlightened, mature expression between 1963 and 1964 when Fontana was at the peak of his creative powers, each of these 38 identically shaped Fine di Dio canvases epitomise the dynamic complexity and spirituality of his oeuvre.
Fontana disturbs the formal symmetry of the large oval canvas corrupting the purity of its candy pink monochrome and replacing the flatness of the picture with an erupting sense of the baroque. For him each painting symbolised the fundamental themes of his spatial investigation, "infinity, the inconceivable thing, the end of figuration, the principle of the void." (Lucio Fontana in interview with Carlo Cisventi 1963, Exhibition Catalogue, Rome, Palazzo delle Espozizioni, Lucio Fontana, 1998, p. 244) The raw moonscape surface of Concetto Spaziale, La Fine Di Dio confronts the viewer with a powerful manifestation of the tentative balance that underlies existence, touching upon the infinite void of the unknown. Fontana firmly believed that the aim of art was to react to new scientific and technological challenges, to extend the boundaries of painting towards new and unexplored spatial dimensions. It followed that if space was conquerable, what else could man tame in God's universe? This series more than any other by Fontana dared to contend with such previously unimaginable realities.
The reassuring pink tranquility of the oval canvas is dynamically contrasted with the raw and expressive picture surface. Cosmic and mysterious, the present work has a sense of inner vitality that enables it to embrace a diverse range of symbolic and formal meanings. Just as the raw meteoric roundness of his 'Nature' look like galactic seeds ready to burst forth, so the ruptures of Fine di Dio take on an otherworldly significance that prophetically foreshadows the imminent first photographs of the meteor-scarred lunar surface. The effect is one that witnesses the juxtaposition of exquisite pink monochrome purity with the brutality of oozing ruptures. With its unique synthesis of meaning and form, this series more than any other fuses all the elements from Fontana's creative. His proclamation of the 'end of God' importantly marks the beginning of a renewed search for spiritual unity in post-war society, amalgamating the scientific and cultural ambitions of man in one coherent universal form.
"Now in space there is no longer any measurement. Now you see infinity in the Milky Way.... the sense of measurement and of time no longer exists.... And my art too is all based on this purity of the philosophy of nothing, which is not a destructive nothing but a creative nothing... And the slash, and the holes, the first holes, were not the destruction of the painting... it was a dimension beyond the painting, the freedom to conceive art through any means, through any form." (Lucio Fontana in Exhibition Catalogue, Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Lucio Fontana, 1998, p. 246)
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