Spatial Conception

Early in his career, Fontana, a sculptor’s son, had concentrated solely on sculpture. In 1948, he began puncturing and, later, slicing canvases, creating what he called Concetti spaziali (Spatial Conceptions). Freeing the canvas from its traditional, two-dimensional status, he formulated a new pictorial language, no longer attempting to create an illusion of space but actually creating space. The …