Lucio Fontana: reaching out into space

Episode of Series “Phaidon art collection”.
The founder and major practitioner of the spatialist movement in art in the 1940s, Lucio Fontana, is the feature of this thorough and personal documentary which covers the expanse of his working career and his ongoing fascination with the concept and evolution of space in artistic practice. Through discussion of his major manifesto’s on the theory of spatialism and the range of work in multiple media through which he expressed his ideas and preoccupations, the program explores the notion of bringing real as opposed to illusory space into art and assesses Fontana’s achievement in the expression of this in the experimentation that marks his celebrated career. The program also traces his derivation of inspiration in creating art forms which are said to break out into space in the traditions of Baroque art and architecture as well as his influence on other artists of the same and subsequent periods. Through interviews with colleagues, friends, family and art critics, a profile of the artist emerges in both personal and artistic terms, with a celebration of the progression of his work and the importance of his impact on artistic expression for his multimedia experimentation, theoretical sophistication and professed feeling for humanity.