A pioneer of abstraction in Italy in the 1930s, Fontana prefigured more informal artistic expression with his sandstone sculptures (1936), before founding the Spatialist Movement in 1947. Born in Argentina, Milanese by adoption and modern through and through, Fontana’s aspiration with his ‘Ambiente Spaziali’ and ‘Concetti Spaziali’ was always to complicate viewers’ relationship with space and light, creating sensory environments with neon signs, ceramic sculptures or punctured cloth. At the MAM, around 200 pieces retrace his radical career, which opened the way to artists working with dark and light like Yves Klein, Julio Le Parc, François Morellet and Dan Flavin.
