Fontana’s aim on graduation was to connect with current European artistic tendencies. In a first step he employed a rough formal language reminiscent of cave painting. The small painted terracotta Figure nere, from 1931, stands for this approach.
In a second step Fontana turned to non-representational or concrete art. The two works entitled Scultura astratta (1934) deal very simply with line, surface, space and material characteristics.
In 1935 Fontana took the logical next step and joined the group Abstraction-Création, which had been founded in Paris and included Wassily Kandinsky, Hans Arp and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart among its members. But he didn’t abandon figural portrayal, and the coexistence of non-representational and representational works in his oeuvre became a hallmark of his art.
At this time Italy was under the rule of fascism. Unlike the National Socialists in Germany, Italian fascism didn’t oppose modern art but co-opted it for its aims and propaganda. Government programmes offered artists numerous opportunities to exhibit or undertake public commissions. Fontana also benefited from these programmes, and realised works for the National Fascist Party and the government, sometimes in close collaboration with architects.
