Italian artist Lucio Fontana is known for his revolutionary approach to the painted canvas. In Fontana’s Spatial Concept series, the artist slashed or cut into the monochromatic surfaces of his paintings, creating three-dimensional objects that provocatively hybridize painting and sculpture. His incisions emulated acts of violence, mirroring the emotional and physical gestures that Abstract Expressionist painters wielded in their own artmaking. Fontana pushed past painterly gesture into the realm of physical force, propelling the act of painting into the realm of performance. This dramatic approach exposes both the physical boundaries of paint on canvas and the limitations inherent in trying to represent the physical world through the traditional, two-dimensional practice of painting.

–From the Glenstone Field Guide