With its superb red surface pierced by a single vertical incision, Concetto Spaziale, Attesa (1966) is a rare and totemic masterpiece which is – at 63 inches (160 cm) high – among the six largest single-cut paintings by Lucio Fontana. The opera will stop in New York on July 10, 2020 for ONE: a Global Sale of the 20th Century.
Of the four red works in this group, it is the last two to remain in private hands, with others residing in the Menil Collection, Houston and Kunsthaus Zürich. The present work has resided in the same collection since the 70s and has not been publicly viewed since it was acquired.
Executed in 1966, the year Fontana was awarded the Grand Prix for painting at the Venice Biennale, the work takes the drama and lyricism of his oeuvre to a grand crescendo, offering a radiant vision of pure, elemental clarity. Working at the height of the space age, the artist pioneered a radical new art form, known as “spatialism”, which sought to reflect contemporary advances in science and technology. Five years earlier, Yuri Gagarin had completed his seminal orbit of the Earth; three years later, the Apollo 11 mission would land humanity on the Moon. With the cosmos open as never before, Fontana has sculpted a new fourth dimension for art, revealing the unexplored space behind the canvas.
Although he employed a rich color spectrum throughout his oeuvre, as indicated by the inscription on the reverse of this work, red has remained one of his most iconic hues. The following year, he would immortalize color in his landmark installation Spatial Environment in Red Light, reconstructed for the acclaimed Met Breuer retrospective in 2019.
For Fontana, who died just ten months before Neil Armstrong's “great leap for mankind,” the works produced in his later years take on a calm and retrospective poignancy. Fontana has never lost faith in the idea that art should strive to surpass the visible world. “My cuts are above all a philosophical affirmation”, he explained, “an act of faith in the infinite, an affirmation of spirituality. When I sit down to contemplate one of my cuts, I immediately feel an enlargement of the spirit, I feel like a man freed from the shackles of matter, a man at one with the immensity of the present and the future”. In the present work, this conviction is expressed in a gesture of solemn iconographic security: a tempting portal to the unknown, surrounded by a flaming and incendiary field of scarlet.
ONE: A global sale of the 20th century: in July Christie will launch a revolutionary relay-style auction concept. Entitled ONE: A Global Sale of the 20th Century, this sale will showcase masterpiece-level XNUMXth century artworks in an online live hybrid sale, blurring the boundaries of the category and bringing customers together in an unprecedented way.
Starting in Hong Kong, the sale will then go to the auctioneers in Paris and London, to conclude in New York. Each city will host a pre-sale public exhibition staged in line with the appropriate regional health advice at the time, complemented by an innovative virtual exhibition and digital marketing campaign to connect with global audiences and support the event of the auction. Bidders will be able to bid both online, via Christie's LIVE online bidding channel, and where regional and governmental advice allows, customers and telephone bidders will be welcome in every hall of the hall.
