3/21/2008

Λούτσιο Φοντάνα- Αλέξανδρος Ιόλας

Lucio Fontana

Lucio Fontana



Lucio Fontana

Lucio Fontana (19 February 18997 September 1968)

was a painter and sculptor born in Rosario, province of Santa Fe,

Argentina, the son of an Italian father and an Argentine mother.

He was mostly known as the founder of Spatialism.

Fontana spent the first years of his life in Italy and came back to

Argentina in 1905, where he stayed until 1922, working as a sculptor

along with his father and then on his own.

In 1928 he returned to Italy, and there he presented his first

exhibition in 1930, organized by the Milano art gallery Il Milione.

During the following decade he journeyed Italy and France,

working with abstract and expressionist painters.

In 1940 he returned to Argentina. In Buenos Aires (1946)

he founded the Altamira academy together with some

of his students, and made public the White Manifesto,

where he states that "Matter, colour and sound in motion

are the phenomena whose simultaneous development makes

up the new art". Back in Milano in 1947, he supported,


along with writers and philosophers, the first manifesto

of spatialism (Spazialismo)**. He also resumed his ceramics works in Albisola.

From 1958 on he started the so-called slash series, consisting

in holes or slashes on the painting surface, drawing a sign of

what he named "an art for the Space Age". In 1959 he

exhibited cut-off paintings with multiple combinable

elements (he named the sets quanta). He participated

in the Bienal de São Paulo and in numerous exhibitions

in Europe (including London and Paris) and Asia, as well as New York.

Shortly before his death he was present at the

"Destruction Art, Destroy to Create" demonstration

at the Finch College Museum of New York. Then he left his

home in Milano and went to Comabbio (in the province

of Varese, Italy), his family's mother town, where he died in 1968.

Fontana's works can be found in the permanent

collections of more than one hundred museums

around the world. He was the sculptor of the bust

of Ovidio Lagos, founder of the La Capital newspaper, in Carrara marble.




back to artist

1899Born in Rosario de Santa Fe, Argentina
2003Died in Varese, Italy
FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION
1931Galleria del Milione, Milan
SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS
1987-88"Lucio Fontana," Musιe national d'art moderne,
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1987-88,
La Fundaciσn 'la Caixa' Barcelona, Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1988.
(catalogue)
1996-97"Lucio Fontana. Retrospektive Kunsthalle," Frankfurt, 1996,
Museum Moderner Kunst Stifung Ludwig, Vienna, 1997 (catalogue)
1998"Lucio Fontana, Palazzo delle Esposizioni," Roma, 1998

Lucio Fontana. Entre Materia y Espacio, La Fundaciσn
'la Caixa' in collaboration with the Museo National Cantro
de Arte Reina Sofνa, Madrid, 1998 (catalogue)
1999"Fontana," Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Enrico Crispolti (ed.),
Edizioni Charta, Milan, 1999 (catalogue)

"Lucio Fontana,'Stasera inauguro la mia mostra da Palazzoli',"
Galleria Blu, Milan, 23 March - 20 May, 1999 (catalogue)
1999-2000"Lucio Fontana," Hayward Gallery, London, 14 October 1999 - 9
January 2000 (catalogue)
2000"Lucio Fontana," 11 Duke Street Limited, London, 27 January - 31
March, 2000

"Lucio Fontana," Sperone Westwater, New York 16 February - 25
March, 2000 (catalogue)
2002 De Pury & Luxembourg, Zurich, October 10-December 10.
2004 "Lucio Fontana," Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf, Switzerland,
10 April- 27 June (catalogue).
2006�Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York� Peggy Guggenheim Collection,
Venice, Italy, 4 June � 24 September 2006.
RECENT GROUP SHOWS
1998-99"Gold. Gothic Masters and Lucio Fontana,
" Compagnia Di Belle Arti, Milan,
27 November 1998 - 17 January 1999, Sperone Westwater, New York, 23 January - 13 February, 1999 (catalogue)
1999-2000"Minimalia; An Italian Vision in 20th-century Art,
" P.S. 1, New York, October 1999 - January 2000
2000"Cosmologies" Sperone Westwater, New York, 4 May - 10 June 2000

"Against Nature": Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Sperone Westwater, New York, 14 September - 28 October
2003"Thinking About Sculpture," The Rachofsky House, Dallas, Texas, 2003-2004.
2004"Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form 1940s-70s," Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 13 June-3 October.


"Seeing other people," Marianne Boesky Gallery,
New York, NY, 18 June-13 August, 2004.
2005"Drawings from the Modern, 1945-1975,"
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 30 March-29 August 2005.

"Figura," Galleria Tega, Milan, Italy, 10 November 2005.
2005-2006"Part Object, Part Sculpture," Wexner Center
for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio 30 October 2005-26February 2006.
2006"Carla Accardi & Lucio Fontana: Infinite Space,
" Sperone Westwater, New York, 6 Janurary - 25 February 2006.

�Line and Surface: Works on Paper,� Peter Blum,
New York, 20 January � 25 March 2006.
2007"Italian Visions: 40 Years of Art," Vivian Horan Fine Art,
New York 20 February - 13 April 2007.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
1987Lucio Fontana. Musιe national d'art moderne,
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1987-88,
La Fundaciσn 'la Caixa' Barcelona, Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam and the Whitechapel Art Galleery, London,
1988. (A smaller, English/Dutch bilingual edition of the
Paris catalogue was produced for the Stedejelijk and
Whitechapel showings.)
1996-98Lucio Fontana. Retrospektive Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 1996,
Museum Moderner Kunst Stifung Ludwig, Vienna, 1997
1998Lucio Fontana. Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma, 1998

Lucio Fontana. Entre Materia y Espacio, La Fundaciσn
'la Caixa' in collaboration with the Museo National
Cantro de Arte Reina Sofνa, Madrid, 1998
1999Fontana. Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Enrico Crispolti (ed.),
Edizioni Charta, Milan, 1999

Whitfield, Sarah, "Curating Fontana," Modern Painters,
Vol. 12, No 3 (autumn 1999), p 114

Anton, Saul, "Circus Minimus," Time Out,
(November 11-18,1999) p 85

Cohen, Mark Daniel, "Lucio Fontana," Review,
(November 15, 1999) pp. 11-13

Lucio Fontana, exhibition catalogue by
Sarah Whitfield (Hayward Gallery, London, 1999)

Lucio Fontana, exhibition Brochure by Susan
Cotter (Hayward Gallery, London, 1999)

Pickstone, Charles,"Not Letting go of God: Lucio
Fontana at the Hayward," The Month, (December 1999)
pp.493-495

Taylor, John Russel, " December choices
," Prospect Magazine, (December 1999)
2000Groom, Simon, "Fontana, Boetti and Pistoletto,
" Modern Painters, (Winter 2000) pp. 113-114

Vetrocq, Marcia E., "Minimalia; A Matter of the Mind,
" Art in America, vol. 88, no.1 (January 2000) pp.88-95

Cone, C., Michele, "Minimalia" ARTnews, vol 99, no.1,
(January 2000) p.162

Lucio Fontana, exhibition catalogue,
(Sperone Westwater, New York, 2000)

Shone, Richard, "Lucio Fontana," Artforum,
XXXVIII, no.0 (February 2000) p.113

Gleadell, Colin " Contemporary market,
" The Daily Telegraph, (Monday February 14, 2000) p.18

Gleadell, Colin " Fontana Market Regains Confidence,
" ARTnewsletter, Vol XXV, No. 13 ( February 22, 2000) pp. 6-7

Cohen, Mark Daniel, "Lucio Fontana," Review,
(March 1, 2000) pp. 30-33

Petersen, Stephen, "from Matter to Light," Art On Paper, Vol. 4, No. 4 (March-April 2000) pp. 52-57

Prose, Francine, 'Fabulous Fontana," Edificerex.com, (March 3, 2000)

Smith, Roberta, "Lucio Fontana," The New York Times, (Friday, March 17, 2000) p. E37

Morgan, Morgan C., "Lucio Fontana," Review (March 15, 2000) pp.18-19

Bell, Bowyer J., "Lucio Fontana," Review (March 15, 2000) pp. 40-42
2003Tully, Judd, "Lucio Fontana," Art & Auction, March 2003, pp. 88-89

E.B., "Lucio Fontana drawings, Stadtische Galerie Villingen-Schwenningen," The Art Newspaper, No. 142, December 2003, p. 24
2004Von Faber-Castell, Christian, "Fragonard to Fontana," ARTnews, May 2004, p. 86
2005Garrels, Gary. "Drawing from the Modern, 1945-1975," Exhibition Catalogue 2005, The Museum of Modern Art, 2005.

Molesworth, Helen. �Part Object Part Sculpture,� Exhibition catalogue. Columbus, OH: Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, 2005.
2006�Infinite Space: Carla Accardi & Lucio Fontana,� exhibition catalogue, Sperone Westwater, New York, 2006.

"Maestri Moderni e Contemporanei, antologia scelta, 2006," Tornabuoni Arte, pp. 146-153.

Sholis, Brian. �New York Critic�s Picks,� Artforum online, 16 January 2006.

Johnson, Ken. �Listings,� The New York Times, 10 February 2006.

Montreuil, Gregory. �Historical Innovations,� Gay City News, 16 February 2006.

Mangini, Elizabeth. �Preview: Lucio Fontana,� Artforum, May 2006, p. 150.
Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale, Attese, 1963
waterpaint on canvas
25 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches
65.4 x 54.6 cm
SW 07131
Fondazione Lucio Fontana Milan number 1737/70
Private Collection

Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale, 1968
oil on canvas
23 5/8 x 27 7/8 inches
60 x 73 cm
SW 06526
Crispolti 68 B 15, Vol. II, p. 705
Private Collection

Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale, 1957
Gouache and graphite on board
19 x 26 3/4 inches
48.3 x 68 cm
SW 07297
Archivo Fontana N. 1735/55
Private Collection

Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale, 1965
oil on canvas
24 x 19 5/8 inches
61 x 50 cm
SW 01177
Private Collection

Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale, attese, 1960
water-based paint on canvas
39 3/8 x 31 1/2 inches
100 x 80 cm
SW 00147
Private Collection

view related works


Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale, 1960
oil on canvas
36 5/8 x 29 15/16 inches
93 x 76 cm
SW 99287
Private Collection

view related works


Lucio Fontana
Lucio Fontana

Jean Pierre Raynaud

Jean-Pierre Raynaud

Jean-Pierre Raynaud est un plasticien français, né à Courbevoie le 20 avril 1939.

Après son diplôme d'horticulture obtenu en 1958, il réalise des œuvres à partir de panneaux de signalisation et de pots de fleur remplis de ciment. Ces derniers deviendront rapidement la marque de fabrique de l'artiste. Il est très vite appelé pour exposer aux quatre coins du monde.

En 1969, il commence à construire sa propre maison à La Celle Saint-Cloud, qui sera sa principale œuvre d'art avant qu'il ne la détruise en 1993. Il en exposa ensuite les "morceaux" à Bordeaux.

Il conceptualise le Mastaba en 1986, qu'il construit peu après à La Garenne-Colombes en proche banlieue. Cette fois-ci, il n'en vendra pas les morceaux, puisque le site a été racheté et connaît des aménagements pour devenir un musée permanent d'art contemporain, dont l'ouverture est prévue pour la fin du premier semestre 2008.

En 1998, rétrospective à la galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume à Paris. Début de la série des drapeaux. En 2006 Raynaud se fait photographier à Pyongyang en Corée du Nord. Debout au milieu de la place Kim-II-sung, il tient le drapeau nord-coréen à bout de bras. Il s'agissait de réaliser une synthèse entre un pays et son drapeau. Il a fallu de longues négociations pour obtenir l'autorisation des autorités.

Jean-Pierre Raynaud a exploré plusieurs domaines de l'art contemporain. Il a réalisé des sculptures, des installations, mais il a aussi aménagé des espaces culturels. On lui doit notamment le fameux Pot Doré sur le parvis du Centre Pompidou ainsi que les vitraux de l'abbaye de Noirlac.

Le 15 janvier 2008 une œuvre estimée à 100 000 euros de Jean-Pierre Raynaud, a été détruite à coups de marteau-piqueur à la suite d'un véritable dialogue de sourds entre le plasticien et le propriétaire de l'œuvre, qui n'ont pu s'entendre.

L'œuvre d'art, une sorte de grand reliquaire de 3 m × 3 m construit en 1986 en parpaings et recouvert de carreaux de faïence, fiché dans le hall d'un immeuble de bureaux du 17e arrondissement de Paris, a été détruite en présence d'un huissier de justice par la volonté de son propriétaire et propriétaire de l'immeuble, avec l'accord de l'artiste.

L'artiste, même si « cela lui est égal[citation nécessaire] » de voir l'œuvre détruite, a rappelé que pour la justice la destruction d'une œuvre d'art était un acte aussi grave que « celui de tirer sur quelqu'un avec un revolver[citation nécessaire] » .

























Yves Tangui


Indefinite Divisibility 1942
Indefinite Divisibility 1942

Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900January 15, 1955) was a surrealist painter. He was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin. After his father's death in 1908, his mother moved back to her native Locronan, Finistère, and he ended up spending much of his youth living with various relatives.

In 1918, Yves Tanguy briefly joined the merchant navy before being drafted into the Army, where he befriended Jacques Prévert. At the end of his military service in 1922, he returned to Paris, where he worked various odd jobs. By chance, he stumbled upon a painting by Giorgio de Chirico and was so deeply impressed he resolved to become a painter himself in spite of his complete lack of formal training.

Tanguy had a habit of being completely absorbed by the current painting he was working on. This way of creating artwork might have came about due to his very small studio which could only comfortably have enough room for one wet piece.

Through his friend Jacques Prévert, in around 1924 Tanguy was introduced into the circle of surrealist artists around André Breton. Tanguy quickly began to develop his own unique painting style, giving his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1927, and marrying his first wife later that same year. During this busy time of his life, André Breton gave Tanguy a contract to paint 12 pieces a year. With his fixed income, he painted less and only ended up creating 8 works of art for Breton.

Throughout the 1930s, Tanguy adopted the bohemian lifestyle of the struggling artist with gusto, leading eventually to the failure of his first marriage. In 1938, after seeing the work of fellow artist Kay Sage, Tanguy began a relationship with her that would eventually lead to his second marriage.

With the outbreak of World War II, Sage moved back to her native New York, and Tanguy, judged unfit for military service, followed her. He would spend the rest of his life in the United States. Sage and Tanguy were married in Reno, Nevada on August 17, 1940. Toward the end of the war, the couple moved to Woodbury, Connecticut, converting an old farmhouse into an artists' studio. They spent the rest of their lives there. In 1948, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

In January 1955, Tanguy suffered a fatal stroke at Woodbury. His body was cremated and his ashes preserved until Sage's death in 1963. Laster, his ashes were scattered by his friend Pierre Matisse on the beach at Douarnenez in his beloved Brittany, together with those of his wife.

Yves Tanguy's paintings have a unique, immediately recognizable style of nonrepresentational surrealism. They show vast, abstract landscapes, mostly in a tightly limited palette of colors, only occasionally showing flashes of contrasting color accents. Typically, these alien landscapes are populated with various abstract shapes, sometimes angular and sharp as shards of glass, sometimes with an intriguingly organic look to them, like giant amoebae suddenly turned to stone.


Yves Tanguy

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Indefinite Divisibility 1942
Indefinite Divisibility 1942







Yves Tanguy (1900-1955) belongs to the more neglected
Surrealists. It was last in 1982, that a retrospective in
Baden-Baden was dedicated to his body of work, despite the fact that he was part of the inner circle of Surrealists.

The exhibition at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart with its
80 paintings and 35 works on paper mainly concentrates
on the Surrealist landscape. All artistic periods of the
artist are covered, from his early Parisian works in 1926/27
to his late work, created in his adopted country, the United States.

Some paintings from American museums can be seen for the first time in Europe, among them Le regard d'ambre (1939),
La Rapidité des sommeils (1945) and La Rose des quatre vents (1950. Also for the first time since the New York retrospective in the year of Tanguy's death in 1955, two of his last major works,
Nombres imaginaires (1954) from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
in Madrid and Multiplication des arcs (1954) from the Museum of Modern Art in New York are reunited.

Besides works by Tanguy, the Stuttgarter Staatsgalerie
also shows exemplary ones by other Surrealists such as
de Chirico, Dalí, Ernst, Klee, Masson, Matta, Miró, Paalen,
Oelze and Kay Sage, Tanguy's second wife. The Surrealist
collective work, Cadavres exquis, rounds up the exhibition.

The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart itself owns one of the Metaphysical Compositions by Tanguy from 1935 and, since last year,
The Hand in the Clouds from 1927.

Tanguy was born in 1900 in Paris as the son of a former
captain who was employed in the Maritime Ministry. Yves
was a very quiet and at the same time anarchistic man.
Allegedly, after having visited a de Chirico exhibition at the
Galérie Paul Guillaume in Paris, he spontaneously decided to become a painter. According to more recent research, the encounter
with de Chirico's work is dated to the year 1922 (former data ranged from 1923-25). In 1923/24, Tanguy began to draw and paint in
watercolors, then influenced by Dadaism, a far cry from his
later Pittura metafisica.

In 1924, André Breton drew up the Surrealist Manifesto.
The autodidact Tanguy only began in the following year to
make painting his profession. Thanks to the attention paid to him by Florent Fels who edited the magazine L'Art vivant,
he could participate at the Salon de l'Araignée with
three drawings. Tanguy's early work shows the influence
of German Expressionism, Cubism and Neue Sachlichkeit
(New Objectivity). Still in 1925, he turned to Surrealism.
In his paintings from the 1920s, he was able to point out the
possibilities not only in Surrealism, but of painting in general.
Tanguy was in contact with Breton, Aragon, Masson,
Magritte, Dalí and Max Ernst, but remained, in the general
public's eye at least, in the shadows of the others.

Tanguy's form of expression, developed in the mid 1920s,
largely remained the same throughout his career,
although Karin von Maur demonstrates in her catalogue
essay that, in fact, his work shows a greater diversity
than expected before.

Tanguy combined the Surrealist's principle of guided
coincidence with the old master's technique of varnish painting.
He remained a follower of André Breton's orthodox Surrealism, not influenced by many others who turned away from Breton.
Towards the end of his life, his relationship with his mentor
was no longer easy because Breton and Tanguy's second
wife Kay Sage hated each other.

The first individual exhibition of Tanguy's works at the
Galérie Surréaliste in Paris in 1927 showed the autodidact
Tanguy at the beginning of his artistic development.
Together with André Breton, he invented the titles
of his paintings. They came from Charles Richet's
Traité de métapsychique
, which dealt with parapsychological
phenomena. The intention of the titles was to confuse
and provoke the observer. Tanguy's search was for the "
reality in the unconscious" and for dreams.

The exhibition catalogue deals not only with the life
and work of Tanguy, but also contains a chronology
written by Andreas Schalhorn which pursues the same aims.
This is not the place to discuss the painter's life in detail.
Just a few words about his last years: in November 1939,
after the outbreak of the Second World War, Tanguy
emigrated to the United States, where, in 1940, he
divorced from his wife Jeannette Ducrocq, whom he had
married in 1925. Shortly afterwards, he remarried.
His second wife was the American artist Kay Sage
whom he had first met in Paris in 1938, when his
marriage with his alcoholic wife was already wrecked.

Tanguy's paintings were also partly a comment on the
arms race and war. In 1948, he became an American citizen.
In his last years, he studied the desert landscapes
. Tanguy died in 1955 in Woodbury, Connecticut, as the result
of a stroke he had suffered from an accident. Already in the
years before, his health had steadily declined. In 1963, his
widow Kay Sage committed suicide. Both of Tanguy's
marriages were childless.