Lucio Fontana

de Enrico Crispolti, Luca Pietro Nicoletti

This catalogue, published for the exhibition dedicated to the artist at Art Basel 2017, is the result of research conducted to provide a deeper understanding of a specific cycle of works by Lucio Fontana. The paintings on show, and analysed in this catalogue, belong to his series The End of God. They were painted on egg-shaped, identically-sized canvases, and feature constellations of ?holes? and/or slashes and/or scratches, which are sometimes limited to one part of the monochromatic canvas, while others cover the entire surface painted in oils (and sometimes sequins). In an interview with Carlo Cisventi in 1963, the artist explained: ?For me, they represent the infinite, the inconceivable, the end of figurative representation, the beginning of nothingness.? 0Lucio Fontana is unanimously considered as one of the leading artists in the generation between the 1950s and 1960s who contributed to the radical linguistic and conceptual change in contemporary art. This role was underlined by specialised art critics right from the immediate post-war years, and then confirmed by an increasingly larger number of scholars and art appraisers, and at the same time, formed a fundamental reference point for the new generation of European artists. 00Exhibition: Art Basel 2017, Switzerland (15.-18.06.2017).