May 05, 2011 - Sale 2246

Sale 2246 - Lot 30

Price Realized: $ 2,640
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
LUCIO FONTANA (1899-1968) EXPRESSDIENST NACH ALLEN ERDTEILEN. 1935.
37x24 1/2 inches, 94x62 cm. Barabino & Graeve-Cenova, Italy.
Condition B+: loss along top margin. Framed.
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 renowned for his slashed-canvas paintings. He only designed this single poster, which exists in several languages. (Fontana is one of the very few successful artists who tried 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." German version. Bolaffi p. 93.