The volume Lucio Fontana. Mecenate Collezionista Militante to be published at the same time as Lucio Fontana in Argentina. Dagli esordi al Manifiesto Blanco by Daniela Alejandra Sbaraglia in the Electa series of critical essays Pesci rossi, marks the start of a collaboration between the publisher and the Fondazione Lucio Fontana. This synergy has given rise to a special series of publications, curated by the Artistic Committee of the Foundation (Silvia Ardemagni, Luca Massimo Barbero, Maria Villa) aimed at promoting new studies and lesser-known aspects of the artist’s many-sided career.
The publication focuses on the artist’s aesthetic-conceptual choices, exploring the role he played as a financial and critical supporter as well as a patron of certain developments and key figures in 20th-century art.
The complex and synchronic study begins symbolically with the exhibition 18 opere della collezione privata di Lucio Fontana / 18 opere della collezione privata di Bruno Munari, held at the Galleria Blu in Milan in May 1957. On this occasion, among the works collected by Fontana, there already appear artists destined to become significant figures in art history, such as Alberto Burri, Enrico Baj, Yves Klein, Osvaldo Licini and Emilio Scanavino. As Guido Ballo observed in his review of the exhibition, “Fontana favours imaginative young artists, inclined toward pictorial or spatial invention, with a more adventurous sense of fantasy.”
His interest in experimental artists also characterised the following years. In 1959 he bought one of the first Linee (1959) by Piero Manzoni and in 1965 the sculpture Tondo e Rettangolo (1964) by Luciano Fabro from his first solo exhibition.
Fontana’s also expressed his support through critical texts, statements and participation in publications and exhibition projects. In the last decade of his life, he was recognised as a sort of “spiritual and conceptual father” by the new generations of artists, in both Italy and abroad, including Gruppo T in Italy and Zero in Germany. His influence grew together with the establishment of his presence in the leading contemporary art venues, from the Venice Biennale to Documenta in Kassel, and European and international museums.
The Fondazione Lucio Fontana was founded on the initiative of Teresita Rasini Fontana, the artist’s widow, on 29 November 1982. Although it has been active in this form since the mid-eighties, its work began much earlier, when the Lucio Fontana Archive was established around 1970. From its early years, Teresita Rasini began a careful, precise archiving of Fontana’s work, in order to protect and enhance it. In this she was joined by a small group of professionals including Enrico Crispolti, who has been close to the artist since the fifties. This commitment has led over time to the recognition of a regularly updated corpus of works, collected in the various editions of the Catalogues Raisonnés promoted and produced in collaboration with the Foundation.
Holder of a core group of works by Fontana, as well as by other artists, together with a substantial bibliographic, documentary and photographic archive the Foundation promotes and encourages studies and publications on the artist, while also collaborating in the organisation of exhibitions devoted to him. This commitment of primary importance has made it possible to conduct projects in the most important public and private institutions, in both Italy and abroad. Since the early years, an Artistic Committee has been established to authenticate and register autograph works, which is still active and, in recent times, also engaged in the production of content capable of eliciting new interpretations and narratives of the master’s work.