FROM FONTANA TO CRIPPA AND TANCREDI

Spatialism emerged in Milan immediately after World War II, within a climate of radical artistic renewal in dialogue with international trends.
The interest in science and technology, the mysterious fascination held among young artists by space probes and the first experimental space launches, as well as the impact of the nuclear catastrophes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1945, prompted a search for an active function in the space concept. In the Spatialist works, space is not understood as a passive void in which forms encamp, but as an active entity encompassing time, space, matter, and movement.
Spatialism owes its birth and spread to two founders: Lucio Fontana, an Italian-Argentine artist who returned to Italy from Buenos Aires in 1947, and the entrepreneur, patron, and gallery owner Carlo Cardazzo, a promoter and supporter of the movement through the intense activity of Galleria Il Cavallino in Venice and Galleria del Naviglio in Milan, opened in the 1940s.
From 1951-52, a dialogue between the Milanese and Venetian Spatial initiatives was active. Artists from the Milan area were joined by artists from the lagoon and internationally renowned figures, painters, sculptors, poets, writers, architects, and musicians.
The Spatialist poetics, anticipated by the publication of Manifiesto Blanco – a manifesto drafted in 1946 in Argentina by Fontana’s young followers –, was defined in the eight manifestos published from 1947 to 1958. They welcomed new members and summarized the theoretical vision of the Spatial Movement: decisive innovation in themes and technical tools; the importance of light and colour; the use of Wood’s lamp, radio, television, and radar; freedom of inspiration and language; the overcoming of opposition between figuration and abstraction; and the projection toward a dynamic future of fantasy, perception, emotion, and science, to be explored in the context of the advent of a new humanism.