In 1949, Lucio Fontana revolutionised art by piercing the surface of a sheet of paper or canvas with a chisel. Space was created on the basis of a gesture, an action, rather than through the illusion of drawing or painting. Until the late 1950s, many of the surfaces that Fontana perforated showed a painterly 'sfumato' (literally 'smoky'), in which brushstrokes or delicately floating geometric forms could be seen.
In 1958, Fontana created the first works of the 'Attesa' series, in which he formulated his idea of space through 'tagli', or cuts: here, too, Fontana initially worked with painterly, moving grounds, before moving on to seemingly anonymous monochrome surfaces that no longer show any recognisable traces of the artist's hand. This placed him in the context of an international movement that, during these years, sought to make the dynamics of a single colour visually and physically tangible through the use of pure colour surfaces.
On the one hand, the rich colours of Fontana's monochrome cut-outs evoke associations with the palette of Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting, which he had studied at the Accademia di Brera. On the other hand, the city of Milan itself, with its neoclassical architecture and famous designers, its sense of style and elegance, undoubtedly influenced his sensibility.
Fontana favoured the use of water-based paints for his 'tagli' works, which made it easier to cut the canvases precisely, as they reduced the tension on the canvas. The execution of the cuts varied: Some were made from the front of the canvas, others from the back, so that the edges either curved backwards or flared out forwards. To create a special effect of depth, Fontana often stretched black gauze behind the slashed areas, which intensified the spatial depth of the cuts to infinity.
