“With the slash I invented a formula that I don’t think can be further perfected. I managed with this formula to give the spectator an impression of spatial calm, of cosmic rigor, of serenity in infinity…”
—Lucio Fontana
With the blade he takes to his works, Lucio Fontana holds in his hands the power of both creation and destruction. Tracing a soft circle around the bold linear incision, emerging in the white porcelain is a slither of darkness. The slash – also known as tagli – both destroys the flat picture plane while simultaneously creating a new spatial dimension, its unbroken exterior now compromised. Within the brazen rupture lies an evocation of a space beyond the material plane, inviting the beholder to enter a new time-space continuum. The work is no longer stationary but a vessel through which to enter the infinite unknown.
Invigorated with a post-war spirit of hope and new possibilities, Fontana published his Manifesto Blanco in 1946 with the students of the Altamira School of Arts, Buenos Aires, an avant-garde haven of forward-thinking artists. The pamphlet announced the goals of “spatialist” art; that which attempted to unify the newest scientific concepts, technology and other advancements derived from modern physics. The artists within the movement upheld the concept that scientific and philosophical developments had transformed the human psyche to such an extent that “traditional “static” art forms and the differentiation of artistic disciplines have become obsolete.” An extension of the Italian Futurists, who were exceptionally vehement in their denunciation of the past, Fontana and other Spatialist artists such as Gianni Dova and Roberto Crippa felt the weight of the past as oppressive, seeking to destroy any existing tenures in order to pave the way for modernism. Proposing a divergence in both essence and form from the established norms, Fontana imbued a philosophical dimension in his works that transition from two-dimension to three-dimension, achieving what the artist called “free space”. His tagli transcend the physical, shifting to an infinite realm that defies space and boundaries.
In Milan in 1957, Fontana attended the opening exhibition of Yves Klein’s Blue Monochromes – a series of almost identical blue paintings through which the artist explored ideas of infinite space and serenity. The works left such a profound impact on Fontana, Piero Mazoni and other Spatialist contemporaries that Fontana subsequently purchased one of the works, finding common ground in the artistic mission to expand the concepts of art. Klein found “absolute unity in the perfect serenity” of his monochrome blues while Fontana physically mutilated the surface of his works to reach the same representation of freedom. Fontana remarked in admiration, “Klein is the one who understands the problem of space with his blue dimension...He is really abstract, one of the artists who have done something important.”
Adding an additional layer of ambivalence, it is indeterminable whether Fontana’s tagli are calming or savage. A friend of the artist described the gesture as a “caress”, an easeful opening of what is beneath. Simultaneously, popular analysis sees the tagli as violent or even iconoclastic, discrediting art historical tradition by mutilating the flat surface, and in doing so, forcing the viewer to engage in a different pictorial space. However, Fontana’s deliberate esoteric obscurity is more optimistic than a pure destructive impetus; his slashes bely a profound fecundity in generating a new dimension. “It’s not true that I made holes in the canvas in order to destroy it, no, I made holes in order to discover, to find the cosmos of an unknown dimension.”
