Written by Elisabetta Girardi

Among the contemporary artworks to be auctioned on March 23 during Auction 9 – Salmoiraghi Collection, today we present Battaglia (Battle) by Lucio Fontana, lot 64.

In this work, the artist conveys with furious energy the imminent clash between a knight and a soldier, while a defeated warrior lies helplessly on the ground. The figures are not clearly defined, and the sculptural treatment of the material, protruding from the surface, invites the viewer to imagine the dynamism of the scene, as if the battle were unfolding right before our eyes.

The sense of movement is further enhanced by Fontana’s masterful use of color.

Auction 9 – Salmoiraghi Collection, Lot 64, Lucio Fontana, Battaglia

Fontana uses yellow and green glazes to evoke natural elements, while pink represents the blood of the fallen warrior, thus creating a background for the raised black-painted figures. Movement, color, time, and space manifest with striking intensity.

The scene unfolds on a glazed terracotta plate measuring 50.5 cm in diameter, created in 1950. His passion for ceramics, which would become a fundamental part of his artistic research, was ignited in the 1930s. Between 1935 and 1939, Fontana traveled several times to the town of Albisola, where he created his first ceramic works at the Giuseppe Mazzotti manufactory. In 1937, he worked as a ceramist at the Sèvres Manufactory in Paris, where he came into contact with artists such as Brancusi, Miró, and Tzara. The following year, F. T. Marinetti referred to him as an abstract ceramist in the Futurist Manifesto of Ceramics and Aeroceramics. The works from this period are characterized by the frenzied and vibrant modeling of dense material, in a play of light and color that reverberates across the surface, creating a sense of movement that goes beyond the static nature of his earlier sculptures.

Nature plays a crucial role as a source of inspiration: Fontana captures its image, form, vibration, and vitality, giving his sculptures a mutable and dynamic appearance.

Auction 9 – Salmoiraghi Collection, Lot 64, Lucio Fontana, Battaglia, reverse

Manifesto Blanco

In 1939, the artist moved to Argentina, and in 1946, he came into contact with a group of young artists in Buenos Aires, with whom he developed new artistic ideas that led to the creation of the Manifesto Blanco.

In this document, the artist emphasizes the importance of moving toward an art form capable of transcending the boundaries of painting and sculpture, embracing a dimension open to new expressive spaces. Central to this vision is the continuous dialogue between art, technology, and science. Through this text, one can see the early development of a spatial dimension in the artwork—an approach that would become the foundation of his later artistic research. This persistent exploration of space, a fundamental element in his body of work, which had to be integrated with material, gesture, color, and form, would lead him in 1948 to write the First Manifesto of Spatialism, followed later by the Second Manifesto of Spatialism. Each manifesto provides a further refinement of the terms and goals of his exploration of space.

The influence of Baroque Art

For the creation of Battaglia and his other ceramic works, Fontana studied and applied Baroque art. The first reference to the Baroque appears in the aforementioned Manifesto Blanco and is later reiterated in the Technical Manifesto, highlighting the connection between art and the representation of space: “The Baroque artists made a leap in this regard: they represented space with a grandeur still unsurpassed and added to sculpture the notion of time. The figures seem to leave the surface and continue their movement into space. This conception was a consequence of the evolving understanding of human existence. The physics of that era, for the first time, expressed nature through dynamics. It was determined that movement is an immanent condition of matter, a principle for understanding the universe”. Baroque art is therefore credited with initiating a relationship between art and movement, anticipating some of the ideas found in modern scientific thought. This process developed as a result of breaking with traditional conceptions of physical and geographic space, prompted by the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo.

Lucio Fontana

Father of Spatialism, before arriving at his famous Concetti Spaziali, the artist Lucio Fontana worked with various materials, including plaster, bronze, and most notably, ceramics.

Through his work with this medium, he pursued the idea of conquering space, a concept previously explored by Umberto Boccioni, whom Fontana considered the only artist to have discovered the fourth dimension.

This led him to develop an art form that broke away from the two-dimensionality of painting and the static nature of sculpture, expanding fully into space.