Lucio Fontana: discovering the Archive and its Art Foundation
Discovering the Fontana Archive, one of the artists most loved by collectors…
The Lucio Fontana Foundation was created with the aim of ordering, preserving and promoting the great artistic heritage of the master of Italian conceptual art.
In 1982 his wife Teresita Rasini Fontana decided to entrust all the artistic heritage of over 600 works to the Foundation, of which she was president until her death in 1995, and started, together with a small group of friends, an archiving activity. careful and punctual of the art of Lucio Fontana, in order to protect the important work of her husband.
This commitment, which began in 1970, with the establishment of the Archive, has led over time to the recognition of a very large corpus of works, now collected in the various editions of the Catalogs Raisonné.
The first of these entitled Lucio Fontana. Catalog Raisonné des Peintures, sculptures et environnements spatiaux was published in 1974 by Enrico Crispolti. Subsequently, this first edition was enriched with more and more updated works and information thanks to a careful work of archiving and data collection that continues today.
Nell’ottica di conservare e valorizzare il patrimonio artistico di Lucio Fontana, la Fondazione collabora attivamente all’organizzazione di mostre all’interno di importanti istituzioni pubbliche o private, in Italia e all’estero.
In order to preserve and enhance the artistic heritage of Lucio Fontana, the Foundation actively collaborates in the organization of exhibitions within important public or private institutions, in Italy and abroad.
Among the most significant ones in Fontana’s exhibition history, the great anthology at Palazzo Reale in Milan (1972), the traveling solo show in Japan (1985-1986), the exhibition at the Center Pompidou in Paris (1987-1988), the five exhibitions for the centenary organized in Milan (1999) and the solo show at the Guggenheim in New York and Venice (2006-2007).
In over forty years of work, first as an “Archive” and then as a “Foundation”, the commitment to preserve Fontana’s work has always been constant, which is why an internal Artistic Commission has been set up for recognition and registration. of the autograph works.
The Foundation provides collectors with a free service for checking Lucio Fontana’s works already recognized as authentic and present in the archive.
If not present in the Archive, the Foundation offers the Authentication service of the works. After sending high-resolution photographs, information and documents necessary for the request for expertise, we proceed with the physical examination of the work by the Artistic Commission chaired by Prof. Massimo Barbero which meets 3 times a year at the Corso headquarters. Monforte 23 in Milan.
At the end of the investigation, only the works deemed by the hand of Lucio Fontana by the Artistic Commission and by Prof. Luca Massimo Barbero will be included in the Archive with a unanimous opinion, without ever carrying out economic evaluations of the works.
The work of the Foundation continues today under the presidency Paolo Laurini with multiple activities in the field of exhibitions, publications, as well as making available to interested scholars materials stored in the archives, such as letters, notes and historical photographs of the artist.
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Photo Credits: Lucio Fontana, ‘Struttura al neon per la IX Triennale di Milano’, (1951/2017), veduta dell’installazione in Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano, 2017 (Courtesy: Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano – ©Fondazione Lucio Fontana) (foto: Agostino Osio)
