Lucio Fontana

Lucio Fontana (Italian: [ˈluːtʃo fonˈtaːna]; 19 February 1899 – 7 September 1968) was an Italian sculptor, painter, and theorist. He is known as the founder of Spatialism and exponent of abstraction. Some of these ideas can be seen in his slashed canvases and his use of neon as a media, like his Milan Triennale piece (now at the Museo del Novecento in Milan).

Born in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina, to Italian immigrant parents, he was the son of the sculptor Luigi Fontana (1865–1946). Fontana spent the first years of his life in Argentina and then was sent to Italy in 1905, where he stayed until 1922, working as a sculptor with his father, and then on his own. Already in 1926, he participated in the first exhibition of Nexus, a group of young Argentine artists working in Rosario de Santa Fé.

Fontana joined the Fascist movement at an early stage and is documented as a member of the Fasci di Combattimento as early as 1920.

From 1922 onwards, he again lived for several years in Argentina, where he worked in his father’s sculpture studio and was employed briefly as an engineer and for a longer period as a sculptor.