Behind Luio Fontan's painting Spatial Concept

Between 1958 and 1968, Fontana made in Milan one of a series of works called Spatial Concept, Waiting. These works have been done on a canvas that has been cut either once or multiply, are collectively known as the Tagli ('cuts'). All of the cut canvas are Fontana's most extensive and varied group of works. They have all come to be seen as symbol of his gestural aesthetic. It was during the late 1940s that Lucio Fontana first began puncturing the surface of paper or canvas in the blurring which made a distinction between two and three dimensionality. Through the 1950s and 1960s, he recognise the importance of this innovation, he continued, and seek different ways of developing the hole as his signature gesture.

It was during the late summer and early autumn of 1958 that the first Tagli were made. They comprised small, often diagonal notch, composed in groups over unprimed canvases. By 1959 these tentative slits developed into single, more decisive slashes, as in the present work. A sharp blade was made to cut every single canvas, and the strong black gauze backed the canvases by giving the appearance of a void behind. The Tagli was experimented with both the size and shape of and painted a number of the canvases in bright monochrome colours. On the back of all the canvases he wrote the word 'Attesa', meaning 'expectation' or 'hope', with one cut, and 'Attese' on all those with multiple cuts.

This added a temporal aspect to the generic title 'Spatial Concept', which he gave to all his works from the late 1940. that he had found a way of 'giving the spectator an impression of spatial calm, of cosmic rigour, of serenity in infinity'.

Many of Fontana's marks - slashes, puncturings, gouges, which evoke pain and in particular wounds to the skin. In this light, his Nature series of sculptures clearly reference female genitalia and the Tagli can also be interpreted.

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