Hommage à Fontana 2.0

My series of Fontana homage paintings is a tribute to the modern artist Lucio Fontana, who pioneered a unique approach by making cuts in his canvases, transforming them into three-dimensional artworks. He called this concept Concetto spaziale. This tribute extends beyond Fontana’s legacy. It is also an homage to the old masters and to the tradition of trompe l'œil painting—a technique that flourished between the 15th and 17th centuries. The French term trompe l'œil means “to deceive the eye,” and its purpose was to create artworks that made the viewer believe that it was actually a three-dimensional authentic composition. My homage to Fontana's work is painted to look like a three-dimensional Fontana artwork but is in fact a two-dimensional artwork that in a traditional trompe l'œil manner is created to deceive the eye of the viewer. The first painting in this series was created in 2022. I worked on the concept alongside my figurative painting practice for nearly a year throughout 2022 and 2023. After a longer pause, I felt a renewed desire to develop and elevate the concept, which sparked a creative process in 2025 and culminated in Hommage à Fontana 2.0. The paintings designated “2.0” focus on harnessing the expressive power of Fontana’s cuts—their impact in its pure simplicity—and optimizing that power through thoughtful composition and refined light and shadow effects. As a painter, I can simulate these effects in ways that would only be possible with perfect lighting on an actual cut canvas. In addition, the 2.0 concept emphasizes the creation of my own cut formations, allowing the cuts to interact playfully and harmoniously with one another, forming a balanced and visually compelling composition. The creative process behind this concept has evolved to create contemporary painting that belongs in the here and now. The essence of our being is to take something old and create something new. This statement briefly summarizes what Hommage à Fontana 2.0 means to me as an artist. While creating contemporary paintings, I continue to channel my fascination with the craftsmanship of the old masters—whose magnificent works have inspired my realistic and figurative painting for nearly thirty years.

Ralf Arzt