Luigi and Lucio Fontana Sculptors: Italian-Argentinean Confluences in the Plastic Arts of the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

Lucio Fontana debuts as a sculptor in Rosario with the Louis Pasteur Portrait (1924). The work, with a verista-symbolic matrix, continues with Lucio’s father work, Luigi Fontana, portrait painter and funeral sculptor in Rosario. Experimentation with portrait began in Lucio as a teenager, as witnessed a drawings serie in which it emerges the paternal milieu, between the  Scapigliatura and Milanese Liberty. The provenance culture also has an ideological weight: the interventionist nationalism of the Fontana family and the accession to the PNF had an influence on the young artista; World War I volunteer and militant in the mussolinian tropos. Since the 20’s of the ‘900, Lucio cooperate with the Rosario Dante Alihieri Association, involved with the promotion of the ‘italianity’ abroad, under the supervisión of the pnf. He’ll do associates portraits, Dr, Guarnieri’s (1927), ed. E. Grimaldi (1944), unpublished. In 1925 will be part of the Italia drafting, informative organ of the association, illustrating two numbers: the woodcuts, as well as editorial contents and some contemporary plastic Works show the requests coming from artists promoted by the regime by L. Bistolfi and A. Wildt, ‘till the Novecento group. It will be the meeting with J. Vanzo which will induce the change to avant-garde languages, ascertainable in the unpublished Piovella plate.