The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao will put a work by Lucio Fontana, “Neon Structure for the Ninth Milan Triennial”, on display for three years in its atrium. The installation was conceived by the great Italian-Argentinian artist in 1951, and its exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Lucio Fontana Foundation of Milan and the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao.
The artwork by Lucio Fontana (Rosario, Argentina, 1899 – Varese, Italy, 1968) was started as a piece whose composition defies the limits of disciplines as diverse as drawing, sculpture, design and lighting. Although the Italian-Argentine artist’s career is best known for his large-scale cut-up canvases —primarily his Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept) series, produced during the 1950s and 1960s— the oeuvre installed for the permanent exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao is part of an earlier and crucial period of experimentation in the artist’s career.
In 2019, the work was part of an exhibition at the museum titled “Lucio Fontana: On the Threshold”. All through his entire career, Lucio Fontana turned space into a topic of constant inquiry and meditation, and he addressed it in multiple contexts using a wide range of materials.
In the words of Paolo Laurini, president of the Lucio Fontana Foundation, “the neon created for the Ninth Triennial of Milan in 1951 could absolutely be considered one of the most representative and iconic works by Lucio Fontana, an absolute example of his disruptive creativity”.
Laurini said the presentation of this work in the atrium of the Guggenheim Bilbao is exceptional, because “the artist always had a special relationship with architects, whom he felt were particularly close to his spatial sensitivity. The great naturalness with which the Bilbao installation dialogues with the fascinating structure by the architect Gehry – offering evocative and previously unseen visions and perspectives – makes us think of an ideal continuation of this relationship”.
