(Rosario di Santa Fe, Argentina 1899–1968 Comabbio)
Ritratto femminile, 1953, signed and dated
on the reverse, raw terracotta, 34 x 28 x 26 cm

Provenance:
A.N.P.I (Associazione Nazionale Partigiani D’Italia), Savona

Literature:
E. Crispolti, Lucio Fontana. Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, Skira, Milan 2006, vol. I, p. 299, no. 53 SC 4 with ill.

‘Lucio Fontana’s work “Ritratto femminile” dated 1953 was donated by the artist to the anti-Fascist association ANPI of Savona in 1955, on the tenth anniversary of the Liberation. 
The terracotta was presumably made in Albisola, in the Mazzotti factory. This factory had been operational since 1906 and had been frequented by the artist since 1936.
At that time, many artists created works at the factories in Albisola as they had a long tradition in the production of ceramics. 
Lots of artists frequented the Ligurian town every year during the summer season, where there had been a stimulating environment for artistic production since the Futurist era.
From the 1950s onwards, Fontana, Asger Jorn, Aligi Sassu, Enrico Baj, Corneille, Sebastiano Matta, Wifredo Lam and many others met in Albisola to create and exhibit their works.
During the Second World War, the city of Savona and the surrounding areas were the scene of great popular participation in the Resistance. The city holds a gold medal for military valour for its important contribution to the partisan struggle and still retains a vivid memory of that period.
It was customary for artists who shared the ideals of ANPI to donate a work as a sign of solidarity. To all intents and purposes, Fontana’s head of a woman is in this sense the type of contribution that the artist had intended for the organisation that carried forth the values that he also believed in.’

By declaring himself a sculptor and not a ceramic artist, Fontana considers himself an artist who, in going beyond craftsmanship alone, has freed himself from any compromise in matter and form.
After completing his training at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in the early 1930s, Fontana moved away from the classical teachings of Wildt and began experimenting with new materials such as plaster and, above all, terracotta. The ductility of the latter made it the most suitable means of expressing creative tension and eliminating the distinction between painting and sculpture.
The human, female figure was a recurrent theme in the artist’s work from his first plaster sculptures. It was only in 1937, however, that the creation of large busts and nervous female figures began to occupy a significant part of his ceramic production.
Fontana’s busts reject both the idealising rhetoric of official portraiture and the reference to models of ancient sculpture. The bodies emerge heavily from the material, breaking the boundaries of form to expand freely; volume is made mobile, to the point of being projected in dynamic continuity with their surroundings.

This restless and demanding sculptor has, perhaps, found in his precious
material his best means for expressing his personal interest in fusing painting and sculpture, according in their
primordial intentions.
Material is placed in space with the maximum of expressive freedom.
Attilio Podestà