Lucio Fontana a Venezia/in Venice, 1960-1961
Lucio Fontana. Origins and Imagination
The symposium, a collaboration between the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Institute of Art History and the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, with the support of Intesa Sanpaolo, will be held on December 5th and 6th on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice.
Lucio Fontana’s vital and inventive work extends and develops over a wide span of time from the 1920s to the end of the 1960s. A career studded with constant experimentation that placed him, from the very beginning, among the pioneers of contemporary art.
In the History of Art of recent decades, the centrality of his figure and work has increasingly emerged, and the new studies, multiple exhibitions and publications dedicated to him have thus been able to restore, especially to new generations of scholars, but also to a wider public, the variety and coherent continuity of his entire creative career. The international conference Lucio Fontana: Origins and Imagination, promoted by the Giorgio Cini Foundation Institute of Art History and the Lucio Fontana Foundation, intends for the first time to take stock of recent and ongoing studies, as well as to promote, at this significant and rich moment, a discussion between scholars who have dealt directly with the artist or whose in-depth studies have touched on Fontana themes that are useful for offering new readings and avenues of investigation: from those more strictly historical-artistic to research concerning the material and conservation aspects of the works.
Over the course of the two days of study, scheduled for 5 and 6 December 2024, there will be the opportunity to explore the imagery and context within which Lucio Fontana’s activity developed, as well as aspects, moments and themes pertinent to his research and critical reception in Italy and abroad.
The futurist roots of his work, the relationship with the sculpture of his contemporaries, the very early creative phase strained between Italy and Argentina, are some of the investigative paths that will be tackled and that will probe the reasons for the author’s current position. A section of the symposium will also be devoted to an in-depth examination of case studies: exhibitions, selected from among the many, that have contributed to building Fontana’s fortune or to promoting particular aspects of his creative parabola, reaffirming his role as a pioneer and the vitality of his research.
The symposium also highlights the interest shown by the Giorgio Cini Foundation in the Italian-Argentine master, the protagonist of several in-depth events hosted and promoted by the Venetian institution: the Exhibition of Drawings and Graphic Works by Lucio Fontana in 1972; the 2014 conference Figurative Art and Abstract Art. 1954 – 2014 and the scholarship Lucio Fontana, Argentinean period: monuments projects and works announced in 2022 once again in close synergy with the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, which confirms its increasing commitment to supporting and encouraging scientific projects on the artist.
5 – 6 December | Admission free subject to availability
Join the live streaming on the Giorgio Cini Foundation YouTube channel