?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
LUCIO FONTANA (1899-1968) EXPRESS SERVICE TO ALL CONTINENTS. 1935. 37 3/4x24 3/4 inches, 96x62 1/2 cm. Barabino & Grave, Genoa. Condition A-: restored losses and restoration in upper left margin and top right margin; horizontal fold. Lucio Fontana is an important figure in the 20th Century contemporary art world. A member of the avant-garde artistic group Abstraction Creation, he is recognized as the founder of Spatialism and is also renowned for his series of slashed-canvas paintings. He only designed this one poster, which exists in several languages. (Fontana is one of the very few successful artists who tried their hands at commercial graphic design.) The sleek, geometrical Art Deco design hints at his future passion for slashing, with the gashes of night and day at either side of the globe. Ironically, given Fontana's future artistic success, Tom Purvis (who illustrated this poster in Poster Progress, 1939), criticized the piece, writing, "a poster which has the merit of simplicity through the shape of the vessel could have been more expressive." English version. Bolaffi p. 93.
