Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) was an Argentine-Italian artist best known for the slashed canvases that redefined what a painting could be. Born in Rosario, Argentina, to Italian parents, he moved between Argentina and Italy, training as a sculptor in Milan before the Second World War. In 1946, while teaching in Buenos Aires, he set out his ideas in the “White Manifesto,” arguing that art should embrace space, light and new technologies. Back in Milan, he founded Spatialism, a movement focused on opening up the flat surface and engaging with real space.
Fontana first punctured his canvases with small holes (the Buchi, from 1949), then made the famous cuts (the Tagli) from the late 1950s—precise incisions that turn the picture plane into an object interacting with the space around it. He also built immersive “Spatial Environments,” worked with neon, and produced powerful ceramic and metal sculptures, often marked by gashes and wounds. His aim was simple but radical: to move beyond representation and bring the viewer into the work’s physical and conceptual space.
Celebrated internationally—he received the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1966—Fontana influenced generations of artists across Minimalism, Conceptual art and beyond. He died in 1968, leaving a body of work that still feels fresh, direct and quietly daring.