George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann "Fontana, Beyond the Slashed Paintings" @wsj by Mary M. Lane
When Lucio Fontana visited New York in 1961, he could muster little English but quickly mastered Manhattan's other lingua franca. "With dollars in my hand everyone understands me!!" the Argentine wrote a friend.
Fontana would have known: The 10 punctured and slashed canvas he was promoting in Manhattan sold out before his show opened. Similar canvases by the artist now fetch up to $20 million at auction.
But there are many other sides of this artist beyond his signature lacerated paintings—as demonstrated at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Its untitled 200-piece Fontana retrospective opened on Friday and runs until Aug. 24.
Fontana, who spent most of his life in Italy and died in 1968 at the age of 69, profoundly influenced such superstars as Yves Klein, Cy Twombly and Thomas Schütte.
But unlike them, Fontana never became a household name. The reason lies in his eclectic, unsettled output, which spans sculptures, drawings, ceramics, paintings and even mosaics, say Choghakate Kazarian and Sébastien Gokalp, curators of the Paris show.
"Fontana is so weird: He changed so much and wasn't exactly kitsch but wasn't exactly a straight thinker. It's much less obvious to understand his works" than those of his followers who settled on one or two styles, says Ms. Kazarian.
Divided into 14 periods, the exhibition begins with muted, often uncolored sculptures such as 1934's "Abstract Sculpture," a small square rock with a spiraling wire protruding from its top. The 1940s heralded a more colorful phase. "Portrait of Teresita," a 1940 bust of the artist's future wife, is covered in shiny mosaic tiles depicting crimson lips, a black choker and golden skin.
In this and other shiny pieces, Fontana anticipated pop art, albeit without the disenchantment, says Mr. Gokalp: "It wasn't cynicism, when he put on pink or gold bits; it was because it was beautiful."
The sculptures and ceramics on display include 14 pieces from the private collection of Karsten Greve, a Paris-based dealer of Fontana sculptures. Among those are a 1937 ceramic crocodile with mottled brown and green coloring over its spiky teeth and skin that stretches out 50 inches. "Spatial Concept," an onyx terra-cotta egg from 1959 with a slash down the middle, predates Fontana's slashed monochrome canvases from 1960 onward.
"All these buyers gravitate toward the cut paintings, but he started making them on ceramics," says Mr. Greve, 67, who bought his first Fontana ceramic in 1969 and recently sold four Fontana ceramics at the European Fine Art Fair for $415,000 to $1.1 million—a mere fraction of the price for Fontana canvases. "A ceramic work is more delicate to transport logistically and more complicated to display," he adds.
For all its eclecticism, the highlight of the show is the 20 cut canvases in hues ranging from white to flesh. While the catalog refrains from ruling on what Fontana meant—if anything—by taking a razor to the cloth, debate ranges as to whether the slashed work contains sexual or violent connotations.
A glowing cobalt blue is a dominant color in the exhibition. Nice-born artist Yves Klein, who met Fontana in 1957, patented something very similar as "International Klein Blue." It was the kind of shrewd marketing move that Fontana would never have pursued, says Ms. Kazarian. "Fontana was more old-style maestro; he was from a whole different generation and wasn't into the branding thing."
While not a marketing man, Fontana could do playful, as shown by "Spatial Environment," a white maze from 1968 with high walls snaking around to a white canvas with a deep slash.
Visitors are welcome to enter, says Ms. Kazarian, though not everyone will be able to, especially after eating a big meal: It's a fairly tight squeeze.