Lucio Fontana

Lucio Fontana (Rosario di Santa Fé, Argentina, 1899 - Comabbio, Italy, 1968), one of the most important artists of the 20th century, moved by an inexhaustible creative attitude that drove him to experiment always different ways and materials. During the Thirties he become a central figure in the Italian abstract art scene joining the group Abstraction – Création. In 1946 he conceives the Manifiesto Blanco, established theories that guided all his career. With the birth of the Spatialism, in 1949 he starts perforating the canvases and titling these artworks Spatial Concept. About ten years later he gets to the revolutionary act of the “slash”. Beyond the famous “Holes”, “Slashes”, and “Sculptures”, during the Fifties and Sixties he conceives several series of works and other “Spatial Environments” he will be working on till the end of his life. Fontana’s work continues to be exhibited globally and is featured in prestigious museum collections worldwide.

 

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Michelangelo Pistoletto, born in Biella in 1933, gained international recognition with his 1962 Mirror Paintings. His Minus Objects series was considered fundamental to the birth of the Arte Povera movement. From 1967, he began to work outside traditional exhibition spaces, with the first instances of that “creative collaboration” he developed over the following decades. In the 1990s, he stablished Progetto Arte and Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto to connect art in relation with diverse spheres of society for inspiring social change. He received the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion for Lifelong Achievement (2003) and an a laurea honoris causa in Political Science (2004) at University of Turin. His recent work includes the Third Paradise which would become a large collective and participatory work over the following decades and the Universario exhibition space, inaugurated at Cittadellarte. In 2007 he received the Wolf Foundation Prize in Arts. In 2021 Universario, an exhibition space in which the artist presents his most recent research, is opened at Cittadellarte. In February 2025 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Over the course of his long career, he has received countless international prizes and awards and participated thirteen times in the Venice Biennale. His works are in the permanent collections of major contemporary art museums.