LUCIO FONTANA - Biography
On February 19, 1899 Lucio Fontana was born in Rosario di Santa Fé, Argentina, from parents of Italian origin. His father Luigi, a sculptor, has been in Argentina for about ten years and his mother, Lucia Bottino, is a theater actress. From school age, Lucio was sent to Italy for studies and entrusted to his uncle of Castiglione Olona, in the province of Varese. From 1906 to 1911 he attended the college Torquato Tasso in Biumo Inferiore (VA) and, once he took his elementary school diploma, he continued with the technical school of the Archiepiscopal College Ballerini, in Seregno. Thus began the apprenticeship of the artist, starting with the practice in the study of the sculptor father (returned in the meantime to Italy) and studying, at the same time, at the School of building masters of the Technical Institute "Carlo Cattaneo" in Milan in 1916, for the after Italy's involvement in the First World War, Fontana interrupted school and enrolled as a volunteer and reaching the rank of infantry second lieutenant.
In 1918 he returned to Milan, after being wounded on the Karst and discharged with the silver medal for military valor. So he resumes his studies and obtains the diploma of building expert.In 1921 he returns to the country of birth, in Rosario di Santa Fè, and decides to follow the family artistic tradition and devote himself only to sculpture. Work begins in his father's atelier, "Fontana y Scarabelli", whose important production is focused on cemetery sculpture. After the success in the competition for a commemorative relief to Louis Pasteur for the Faculty of Medicine of the National University of the Coast, in 1924 he changed his perspective and dedicated himself to sculpture intended no longer as a commercial artistic production, but as a research. He therefore set up on his own, opening a sculpture studio in Rosario.
Between 1925 and 1927 he won several public competitions and received the first important commissions, such as the monument to the educator Juana Blanco on Calle San Salvador in Rosario. In mid-1927 he returned to Italy, again to Milan, where he enrolled in the first year of sculpture of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts (1927-1928). Here he begins to follow the courses of Adolfo Wildt and the Marble School: at the end of the year he is promoted to the 4th course and, at the end of 1929, he graduates presenting the sculpture El auriga as his final work (1928). In this period he is still strong the influence of the Maestro and is found, among other works, in the various cemetery creations for the Monumental of Milan (Cappella Mapelli, 1928; Tomba Berardi, Loculi Pasta and Locati, 1929). 1930 is a year full of significant events for Fontana: he participates in the XVII Venice Biennale (where he is Commissioner Wildt), presenting the sculptures Eva (1928) and Vittoria fascista (1929), and holds his first solo exhibition at the Galleria del Milione, in Milan, commissioned and organized by Edoardo Persico. It is here that the artist exhibits Black Man (1930), a work of profound rupture, disapproved by Wildt himself.
