Lucio Fontana

Le Jour, Spatial Concept, 1962
Lucio Fontana, 1899/1968
(courtesy TornabuoniArt Gallery, Paris)

Only a few seconds to hit the canvas with a awl, perforating it.  
A four-handed artwork which was founded after 52 years of oblivion, it is now in Italy for the first time exhibited in BIG - Borsa Italiana Gallery.

From 20th March to 31 March 2017
Palazzo Mezzanotte, Piazza degli Affari 6 Milan

BY INVITATION ONLY

The story of this discovery is quite convoluted (it lasted ten years, from 2004 to 2014) and is worthy of note.
In 2004 at the Paris Fiac show a gentleman turned up at the Tornabuoni stand with a photo of a painting, saying his father had left him a Fontana but that he had no proof of its authenticity. Only dealing with certified paintings, gallerist Michele Casamonti turned down the offer. The man insisted and so the gallerist suggested that he at least bring him a photo of the back of the painting, which bore the signature of Lucio Fontana but also a black mark.

Nothing doing. But the man didn’t give up and in 2006 he approached the gallerist again, telling him that the painting had come from Louis Bogaert, a cutting-edge collector (the clean-shaven man that speaks last in the video) who had invited artist Jef Verheyen to his holiday home in Knokke to carry out a performance. Verheyen asked to work on space and light with Lucio Fontana, who accepted the invitation asking him to prepare a large canvas painted gold. None of this was reported in Italy.

The gallerist’s ears pricked up on hearing the name Bogaert but the problem of the back of the work, which failed to convince him, remained. Nonetheless, he began asking around.  In 2007, at an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris the director of his gallery saw a video of Fontana in Belgium and passed on the information but there was no relevant documentation in the Fontana Archive. In 2010 the collector went on the attack again, informing the gallerist that the painting came from Belgium. The gallerist got to work, contacting Verheyen’s daughter who gave him the date that the film was broadcast on Belgian TV (1962). The pieces of the jigsaw began to fit together. Having recovered the video, the work in the photo appeared to be the same as that in the film. A frame of the film was then enlarged in order to project the image onto a real frame, making it possible to verify that the holes coincided to the millimetre. And the meaning of that indecipherable scrawl became clear - it was the signature of co-creator Verheyen, who exhibited the painting in 1963 and 1964. The Lucio Fontana Foundation certified the work and confirmed the discovery, which is even more extraordinary as it is the only painting that the master produced while being filmed. The artist’s actions last for about ten seconds but firstly he sizes up the right position in which to “attack” the canvas. If you pay attention to the sound, at a certain point you can hear a clean, clear noise: at hole number 10 the artist hits the underlying chassis of the canvas prepared for him by Verheyen with a punch - it had a cross-shaped frame, which wasn’t suitable for Fontana’s technique.

Curated by: Francesca Pini
Technical insurance partner: BIG - Broker Insurance Group