'Father of Abstraction' Exhibit Arrives in Larchmont

While he may not get the credit he deserves for being a pioneer in abstraction, Lucio Fontana is well known in the art world for founding the art movement "Spatalism." His work is in hundreds of museums around the world and contained in some of the top private collections in the country.

The Spatialists were trying to create a new dimension in painting and Fontana tried to bring out a third dimension to the flatness of the canvas, which led to his famous signature works in which the canvas was pierced by holes or slashes.

On April 28, PGartventure Gallery opened an exhibit on the famous artist, entitled "Lucio Fontana:  Concetti Spaziali Prints and Sculptures," featuring works Fontana did up until his death in 1968.

"One of the things I want to do with this gallery is educate people about the history of art, and this artist is really the father of abstraction," said the gallery's owner, Pascale Goldenstein. "He started doing abstraction in the '40s, and it's very important for people to understand it's not just avant-garde."

Goldenstein met a collector who owned about a dozen of Fontana's work, and the two decided an exhibition would be a great way to show off what the artist has created.

Born in Argentina and of Italian origin, Fontana cultivated his love of art growing up in Milan. In 1946, back in Argentina, he published the "Manifesto Blanco," in which he intended to synthesize color, sound, space, movement and time to create art for a new age, offering no limit in space or size.  He wished to unite art and science to project color and form into real space by the use of then new techniques such as neon lighting and television.

"If you read about Fontana, he was a very, very highly trained sculptor back in the '20s and '30s. He worked for Mussolini during the war doing monuments and at some point he started putting holes in copper plates, and he became fascinated by the way the space entered the plain of the flatness, and he really became interested in abstraction," Goldenstein said. "He was the first one to do neon instillation back in the '40s, when people think it started in the '60s, but he was the first one to really use technology to do art."

One of the works on display was a bronze sculpture cast in 1959, where Fontana put holes in the copper. The exhibition also includes several 1960s Concetti Spaziali original prints, with punchholes and incisions.

"I think that his work is utterly fascinating, although I prefer the three-dimensional work very much so," said David Silverstone, a long-time Larchmont resident.   "Some of the conventional work does convey three dimension in a collapsed space. It's all very interesting work."

Also at the gallery is a multi-media presentation featuring Fontana's work on a TV screen, which provides history and notes about each piece of art.

"For me, this is really strong work. People think they can do this, but they can't," Goldenstein said. "They see a white piece of paper with a line on it, but to understand where it comes from, they can watch the film and really learn about it."

The exhibit will run until May 29. A talk on Fontana's influence and contribution to art history will take place on Thursday, May 13th, at 5 p.m. at the gallery.