Spatialism (Italian: Spazialismo) emerged as an art movement established by the Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana in Milan in 1947, aiming to synthesize color, sound, space, movement, and time into a novel artistic form.
Overview
The foundational principles of the movement were first articulated in Fontana's Manifiesto blanco (White Manifesto), published in Buenos Aires in 1946. This manifesto introduced the concept of a novel "spatial" art, aligning with the prevailing post-war ethos. It rejected the illusory or "virtual" dimensions inherent in traditional easel painting, instead advocating for the integration of art and science to project color and form into tangible space through contemporary technologies like neon lighting and television. Subsequently, five additional manifestos were issued; these elaborated more on the movement's rejections than its affirmative propositions, advancing the core concept of Spatialism only marginally beyond defining its essence as "plastic emotions and emotions of color projected upon space." In 1947, Fontana conceived the "Black Spatial Environment," a room entirely painted black, which is recognized as a precursor to Environmental art. His distinctive stabbed and slashed canvases, initiated in 1949 and 1959 respectively, are also regarded as quintessential expressions of Spatialism. A notable instance of the slashed technique, executed with a razor blade, is Spatial Concept Waiting (1960), housed at the Tate, London. Despite the somewhat abstract nature of Fontana's theoretical framework, his perspective proved highly influential, positioning him as one of the earliest, and arguably the first Latin American and European artist, to genuinely champion art as a gestural or performative act, rather than solely as the production of a lasting physical artifact.
Cyber-Spatialism
In 2005, the Franco-German artistic duo Cécile Colle and Ralf Nuhn created a series of canvases incorporating computer connectors, titling this body of work "Cyber-Spatialism." This project drew significant inspiration from Fontana's oeuvre. The artists stated that "by substituting Fontana's slashes with computer connectors, Cyber-Spatialism implies an extension of the canvas into cyberspace, and thus attempts to address the notion that, in today's globalized culture, real space is increasingly being replaced by virtual space."
Citations
References
- Chilvers, Ian. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Oxford University Press, 2003. Accessed via web on 13 October 2011.
- Media related to Spatialism at Wikimedia Commons