5. He experimented with materials that were innovative for the time
9 Things You May Not Know about Lucio Fontana
Lucio Fontana, Struttura al neon per la IX Triennale di Milano, 1951, “Lucio Fontana”, Palazzo Reale, Milano, 1972. Foto: Ugo Mulas © Eredi Ugo Mulas. Tutti i diritti riservati. Courtesy Archivio Ugo Mulas, Milano - Galleria Lia Rumma, Milano/Napoli. © Fondazione Lucio Fontana
Lucio Fontana, Struttura al neon per la IX Triennale di Milano, 1951 © Fondazione Lucio Fontana
“Working with the architects Baldessarri and Grisotti, we replaced [the decorative ceiling] with a new element that has become part of everyday life, neon.” (Lucio Fontana, Gli spaziali alla IX Triennale di Milano, in “Domus” n. 254, 1951)
Neon, ultraviolet light, and fluorescent paints were some of the materials that entered Lucio Fontana’s artistic vocabulary in the late 1940s, borrowed from the fields of science, technology, cinema, and industrial experimentation. The artist sensed their potential to modify the way we perceive space, and adopted them as highly innovative elements in his work.
