Films
On Site: Lucio Fontana’s ‘Ambienti Spaziali’ with Curator Luca Massimo Barbero
Fontana’s groundbreaking environments dating from 1948 to 1968 were presented for the first time in Los Angeles in February.
Tracing his contribution to the evolution of conceptual art through nine of his ‘Ambienti spaziali’, Curator Luca Massimo Barbero walks us through Fontana's works that broke the mold, and reshaped the landscape of contemporary art.
‘When you walk into the show, you’re actually dropped like a time-traveler into Milan in 1949.’—Luca Massimo Barbero
The exhibition features nine of Fontana’s environments, arranged chronologically dating from the years spanning 1948 to 1968. Together, these ephemeral works reveal the artist’s revolutionary approach to artmaking as a quest to ‘open up space, create a new dimension, tie in the cosmos, as it endlessly expands beyond the confining plane of the picture.’ ‘Walking the Space’ is the first of a trilogy of exhibitions that Hauser & Wirth will present in collaboration with the Fontana Foundation and Luca Massimo Barbero, leading Fontana scholar, Director of the Institute of Art History, Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice, and Editor of the Fontana works on paper catalogue raisonné and of the Fontana ceramics catalogue raisonné (currently in progress). The Los Angeles exhibition will be followed by an exhibition in New York in Spring 2021, exploring Fontana’s ceramics and sculptures. Subsequently, a major survey of the artist’s full career will be staged at Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong in Fall 2021. –
Learn more: ‘Lucio Fontana. Walking the Space: Spatial Environments, 1948 – 1968’.