Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) was one of the most innovative artists of the postwar period. In works that merge painting, sculpture, and architecture, he investigated the nature of matter, energy, and space. Best known for his radical Tagli (Cuts)series (1958–68) of slashed monochrome paintings, Fontana moved through various formal periods over the course of his career, always seeking what he called “the new,” embracing technological progress and transcending categories of figuration and abstraction.

Born in Rosario, Argentina, to parents of Italian origin, Fontana studied in Italy and apprenticed for his father, who sculpted funerary monuments. He volunteered to serve in the First World War (1916–18) and enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan in 1927. In 1930, Fontana presented his first solo exhibition at the Milione Gallery, Milan, and was included in the Venice Biennale. His geometric figure Uomo nero (Black Man, 1930) is considered to be the first work of his mature period. In 1940, he returned to Argentina, where in 1946 he published the Manifiesto Blanco, proposing the integration of art and science, and initiated works under the term Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept). The following year, he established the first in a series of manifestos of Spatialism, advocating for a greater art that involved the dimensions of space and time; this led to proto-installation works incorporating neon as well as experimentation with television broadcasting. Over the next decades, he would explore this concept in series wherein he perforated and incised canvas, including Buchi (Holes, 1949–68); Pietre (Stones, 1952–56); and La Fine di Dio (The End of God, 1963–64). In 1949, Fontana created his emblematic Ambiente spaziale a luce nera (Spatial Environment in Black Light), and his ceramic sculpture was included in the exhibition Twentieth-Century Italian Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1959–60 he extensively exhibited the Tagli, and in 1961, he mounted his first solo exhibition in the United States, at Martha Jackson Gallery, New York. In 1966, he was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale.

Fontana participated in multiple iterations of the Venice Biennale (1930, 1948, 1950, 1954, 1958, 1964, 1966, 1968) and Documenta, Kassel (1959, 1968). His first international retrospective was mounted by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1977, and retrospectives have recently been dedicated to his work at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2014) and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2019). Other major museum exhibitions include those at Musée national d'art moderne de la ville de Paris and Centre Pompidou, Paris (1987, traveled to La Fundación “la Caixa” Barcelona; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Whitechapel Gallery, London); Kunsthalle Frankfurt (1996, traveled to Museum Moderner Kunst Stifung Ludwig, Vienna); Hayward Gallery, London (1999); and Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (2006, traveled to Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York).