WUPPERTAL.- Lucio Fontana (Argentina 1899 - Italy 1968) is one of the key figures in 20th century art internationally and revolutionised the concept of art as a pioneer of new forms and concepts. His inspiring influence on several generations of artists is indeniable. Despite this, there has not been a major museum exhibition in Germany to honour his work for almost 30 years.

Around 100 works from the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan, as well as from public and private collections provide an insight into the astonishingly experimental and daring work in ‘Lucio Fontana: Expectation’. With this exhibition, the Von der Heydt Museum brings Fontana's complex oeuvre to life in all its many facets: from figurative to conceptual works, from ceramics to spatial installations. A highlight of the presentation is the reconstruction of one of his environments, which are hardly known despite their significant role in Fontana's thinking.

Modern science and technology inspired Fontana. The series of paintings with slashes, which he subtitled “Expectation” (Italian: “Attesa”), has become a trademark of Fontana's art. They embody his fascination with material and space, his aspiration to break out into the new and open.

One chapter of the exhibition is dedicated to the exchange between Fontana and a younger generation of artists who took up his ideas and visions of the future: Internationally, Piero Manzoni and Yves Klein should be mentioned, and for the Rhineland, ZERO artists such as Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker in particular. He was also friends with the Düsseldorf photographer Lothar Wolleh, who created iconic portraits of him and realised a multiple toge- ther with him.

Fontana's work is groundbreaking, if not controversial, in particular because he devoted it entirely to the experience of space and time. In view of a visual world that is becoming increasingly fluid thanks to electronic media, the diagnosis he made back in 1946 that speed is the decisive experience of modernity seems more relevant today than ever. On the other hand, Fontana's works can be seen as an antithesis to the potential total transformation of the real world by the digital world, as they owe their effect to an elementary sculptural, albeit often highly unconventional approach to the material.

The exhibition is curated by Roland Mönig and Beater Eickhoff in collaboration with Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milano.