“Between suicide and travel, I chose the latter because I hope to still make a series of ceramics
and sculptures that give me
the pleasure or feeling of still being a living man.”
Cavalli Marini - 1936
Donna Seduta - 1938 - Nudo Femminile Seduto - 1940
“You had to model and in the modelling you gave all the life, all the form.”
Lucio Fontana
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Mani-Fattura: The Ceramics of Lucio Fontana
At the Peggy Guggenheim Collection - until March 2 - Manu-Facture: The Ceramics of Lucio Fontana is the first museum exhibition devoted exclusively to Fontana’s ceramic work. Known for his iconic slashed canvases of the 1950s and ’60s, Fontana - 1899-1968 - also created groundbreaking clay pieces - an essential yet lesser-known part of his oeuvre which began in Argentina in the 1920s. Curated by art historian Sharon Hecker, the show offers the first in-depth look at of his ceramic production.
Exhibition View
Featuring over seventy works - many never before exhibited - the exhibition illuminates the full scope of Lucio Fontana’s sculptural vision in clay. Spanning his early years in Argentina, his return to Fascist-era Italy, and his postwar explorations during reconstruction and the economic boom, the exhibition traces how he transformed clay into a site of radical experimentation. It invites viewers to see Fontana not only as a pioneer of Spazialismo and Conceptual Art, but as a tactile, materially engaged artist whose collaborations with figures like ceramist-poet Tullio d’Albisola and the Mazzotti workshop in Albisola revealed a more intimate and exploratory side of his practice.
Figure Nere - 1931
Giuseppe Mazzotti and Lucio Fontana - Crocodile and Snake - 1936
"An entire petrified and shining acquarium."
"The material was shaken but firm."
Lucio Fontana - 1938
Coccodrillo - 1936-37
In 1927, Lucio Fontana returned to Italy from Argentina to study under Adolfo Wildt at the Accademia di Brera but soon broke from academic conventions. By 1931, he was exhibiting small, raw terracotta sculptures—unglazed, minimalist pieces that balanced figuration and abstraction. Some were flattened like reliefs; others explored volume and depth. With minimal decoration—incised lines, touches of color, or gold—his solemn female heads and abstract forms reveal an early search for expressive simplicity.
Studio di testa - Busto Femminile - Ritratto di Bambina - 1931
Cavalli Marini - 1936
Donna Seduta - 1938 - Nudo Femminile Seduto - 1940
After World War II, Lucio Fontana created intimate ceramic portraits of women close to him. Portrait of Teresita - 1949 - captures his wife with tender intimacy. Portrait of Milena Milani - 1952 - writer, artist, and the only woman to sign his Spazialismo manifesto, reflects both intellect and shared artistic vision. Portrait of Esa -1953 - niece of ceramist Tullio d’Albisola, honors a fellow artisan, marked by the rose-shaped pendant in clay. Together, these works reveal Fontana’s evolving, personal vision of the feminine, blending memory, affection, and artistry.
Ritratto di Esa - 1953
Lucio Fontana’s dynamic crucifixes and depositions from the late 1940s and ’50s blend stasis and movement. Created for Milanese homes during the economic boom, they begin with a simple cross form, yet each Christ is reinvented through abstract shapes and unpredictable glazes. Between repetition and variation, Fontana transforms religious intensity into aesthetic ecstasy, suspending the finality of death.
Exhibition View + Crocefisso - 1955-56
Lucio Fontana - 1968
In his final decades, Lucio Fontana’s ceramics embrace the slash gesture as a defining, expressive act. Stripped-down terracotta pieces, often pocked, slashed, or cleaved, reveal the imprint of his hands and primal gestures. Works like the Pane panels and the spherical Nature series evoke beginnings - eggs, seeds, or clay balls transformed through tossing, kneading, and splitting. These late works celebrate the ritual of making, blending matter, gesture, and creation in their simplest, most elemental form.
Exhibition View
Concetto Spaziale - 1962-1963
Concetto Spaziale - 1957
Director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection - Karole Vail with Sharon Hecker
Art Historian Organizer of the exhibition
