Concetto spaziale (Spatial Concept)

A "hole" or "cut" in the canvas represents an earth-shattering, completely new means of expression, which enabled Fontana to free himself from bonds of picture space and traditional ways of painting. This gesture gradually crystallised from his works from 1947-1949, in which he tried to diversify form and space. In the works of the picture cycle Concetto Spaziale-Teatrini from the mid-1960s, he developed his poetry with refined aestheticism, made present by the never-ending space in the mode of the "theatre". The black frame, separated from the picture itself, links real space, in which the observer is located, with never- ending space, created by a number of small torn openings in the canvas.