Beyond the canvas

Exhibition Manu-Facture, at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection until March 2, is the first museum‑scale monograph devoted entirely to Lucio Fontana’s ceramics, curated by Sharon Hecker. Starting from his famed “cut”, the gesture that defined and later overshadowed his legacy, the exhibition reopens a blind spot by restoring attention to Fontana’s other artistic soul. Over seventy works reveal a vivid, narrative world: dancers, animals, portraits, sacred figures, and decorative forms spanning more than forty years, from Argentina to wartime Italy. What once seemed a marginal practice emerges as Fontana’s daily laboratory, shaped by repetition, error, and collaboration at the Mazzotti furnace. Here, an unexpected Fontana appears: experimental, open, humble before matter. When the familiar cut resurfaces in clay, it no longer reads as a sudden stroke of genius but as the natural outcome of a long, patient process. The exhibition invites viewers to reconsider Fontana himself: not just the author of a single gesture, but an artist for whom continuity, labour, and material exploration truly defined his vision.

Featured image: Lucio Fontana: Concetto spaziale, 1962-63, Milano, Fondazione Lucio Fontana
© Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milano, by SIAE 2025