PRESS RELEASE
Lucio Fontana’s monumental plaster ceiling Ambiente Spaziale con tagli (1960)
at Art Basel Unlimited, stand no. U49
13 – 16 June 2019, Preview days 10 – 12 June
Partners: Ben Brown Fine Arts + Dickinson + Amedeo Porro Fine Arts SA, in
collaboration with Galleria Tega and Magazzino
In collaboration with our partners we are delighted to present for sale Lucio
Fontana’s Ambiente Spaziale con tagli, the largest of the artist’s ceiling
installations, at this year’s Art Basel Unlimited. This marks the first opportunity to see the work, which was inspired by diverse sources including Michelangelo’s architectural designs, installed as a ceiling in an architectural setting as it was originally conceived by Fontana.
Ambiente Spaziale con tagli was commissioned from Fontana by the Milanbased property developer Antonio Melandri, as part of a renovation project
overseen by the architect and interior designer Osvaldo Borsani. It was not
Fontana’s first instance of collaboration with Borsani: throughout the 1950s, he regularly provided ‘spatial’ ceilings and decorated entire walls for his friend, in an exclusive collaborative relationship. In letters to Borsani Fontana expressed his desire to create something ‘halfway between architecture and painting’.
The exhibition of this monumental Fontana ceiling coincides with a major
retrospective, Lucio Fontana: Beyond the Threshold, opening at Guggenheim
Bilbao on 17th May, after its successful first leg at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Just as the iconic slashes and perforations in Fontana’s
canvases opened up the picture plane, this large-scale installation expands
notions of, and breaks barriers between, sculpture, painting and the urban
environment.
Ben Brown Fine Arts
12 Brook’s Mews, London | 303 Pedder Building, Hong Kong
www.benbrownfinearts.com
Dickinson
58 Jermyn Street, London | 980 Madison Avenue, New York
simondickinson.com
Amedeo Porro Fine Arts
15 Old Bond St, London | Via S. Balestra 9, Lugano
www.amedeoporrofinearts.com
Galleria Tega
Via Senato 20, Milan
www.galleriatega.it
Magazzino
Via dei Prefetti 17, Rome
www.magazzinoartemoderna.com
For further press information:
Susie Lawson – Director, Branch Arts
[email protected] | +44(0) 7971 007576 | www.branch-arts.com