There is a black-and-white photograph of Lucio Fontana working in the Albisola workshop in Liguria. “When people think of Fontana, they think of the slashes. In reality, they relate to a brief period of his work, while ceramics accompanied him throughout his life,” explains Sharon Hecker, curator of the exhibition Mani-Fattura at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. The title of the exhibition, dedicated to Fontana’s ceramics, underscores the importance the curator places on the physical act of putting one’s hands into clay—a point of arrival in his artistic journey—and on the uniqueness of what is handmade. It took more than five years to select the works, linking them to a female interpretation and to previously unseen details of an artist better known for his canvases than for his ceramics.
Lucio Fontana was born in Rosario, Argentina, from a relationship between a theatre actress and an Italian man, who later married another woman. At a certain point, his father sent him to boarding school in Milan. He would see his mother only once more in his life—a trauma often overlooked, much like his voluntary enlistment at the age of 17 during the First World War, from which he returned wounded and deeply shaken. Fontana was never able to free himself from thoughts of war. As the curator recounts: “In an interview, Fontana said he had lived through the horror of the trenches for two years, and it was precisely then that he decided to dedicate himself to art.” He enrolled at Brera, studying under sculptor Adolfo Wildt. He began working with marble, but it was not his medium. Postwar artistic movements in Milan were searching for new horizons, as old forms had been shattered on the battlefields.
“In 1931 he held an exhibition of small terracottas,” Sharon explains. “He doesn’t yet enter into the clay—this is why I call this room ‘Hands on the clay,’ not in the clay. These are merely reliefs with a bit of cold-applied colour, because he did not yet know how to glaze.”
The exhibition also includes his first work, The Charleston Dancer, which had been lost for years. “I searched for it for years and found it when the exhibition had already been designed, but we made room for it given its importance. It isn’t a ceramic, but a painted plaster.” By scanning the QR code on the label, one recognises in the frivolous figurine the profile of Josephine Baker, the rebellious celebrity.
The approximately seventy sculptures on display come from all over, including some extremely rare pieces—such as a small figure that appeared in the 1931 exhibition and has only been shown once since then. “I found it sitting on a lace doily in a house,” Sharon explains. There is also a series of archaic female figures, one of Fontana’s recurring themes. “He had a very articulated vision of women, far more complex than the interpretation of the slashes as representations of female sexuality.”
In 1935, Fontana discovered glazes and met sculptor and poet Tullio d’Albisola, who would become a lifelong friend. From this period come works such as the petrified aquarium and crocodiles, which demonstrate Fontana’s versatility: moving from highly abstract to highly figurative, from raw to heavily glazed—all within the same years.
At the time, Fontana had never sat at a potter’s wheel. He never missed an opportunity to stress that he was a sculptor, not a ceramist. For production, he relied on the renowned artisans of Albisola, whom he frequented throughout his life.
One room is dominated by the gigantic bust of Augustus, the so-called Torso Italico from 1938—three hundred kilograms of clay that will likely never leave the collector’s home again. “We don’t know who commissioned it or why; it dates to the Mussolini era,” the curator explains. “On the dark armour of the torso you can see the Winged Victory, the equestrian monument of Marcus Aurelius, and the Lion of Judah taken from Ethiopia. But the arms are severed, the genitals are almost non-existent, the lion should be standing on its paws, the tree has no roots and few leaves. It looks more like a mutilated Italy. Rather than an homage to the regime, it feels like a rupture.” At the end of the 1930s, with the air of war once again looming, Fontana returned to Argentina.
The spectre of war is ever-present in his work—sometimes subtly allusive, sometimes explicit. In 1947 he wrote: “Between suicide and travel I chose the latter because I hope to realise another series of ceramics and sculptures that give me pleasure or the feeling of being a living man.” Ceramics became an expression of vitality. When he returned to Milan in 1947, he found a city in ruins but recognised its potential for rebirth. While his architect friends redesigned the city, he focused on ornamentation, such as the balconies of the building on Via Lanzone 6. During this phase, he began deeply cutting into the clay with a knife, entering the material. Cutting ceramics is not like cutting canvas; it requires a softer gesture. This can be seen in the busts of his wife Teresita, of writer and artist Milena Milani, and of Esa Mazzotti, niece of his friend Tullio. He portrayed women with whom he shared intimate relationships—just as the act of modelling clay, carving it and hollowing it out, is itself intimate. His wounds, both physical and emotional, reappear in the room of crucifixions and depositions, lit to reveal colours, shadows and jagged contours. Sometimes Christ seems to dance; other times he lacks a defined form, arms or feet, reduced to flayed flesh—what remains. “Here we find Fontana wounded in body and soul,” the curator observes.
As he began creating his first design objects for Milanese homes—multiples that were nonetheless unique pieces—Fontana also started reflecting on modern sculpture. In the 1950s, he began modelling clay to explore organic forms, resulting in large works displayed in the exhibition’s final room. As at the beginning, the journey ends with a photograph: the sculptor with his pierced, non-vase vessels—large works with essential forms. They sometimes resemble space objects, yet they are the result of the repetitive gesture of tossing a lump of clay before working it, a process used to remove air, much like kneading bread—a task now done by machines. These works are hollow inside, bearing the artist’s imprints—thighs, elbows, fingers. He immerses himself in the material. “I wanted to end with this photograph because I thought he was cutting, but in fact he is holding a lamp to illuminate the work; he isn’t cutting,” Sharon explains. “We return to the beginning, because modelling is a form of life, of vitality. The photographs on display are never gratuitously biographical, but tied to the act of making and to Fontana’s relationship with raw material.”
The exhibition Manu-Fatti—which we recommend visiting slowly, exploring the QR codes that offer insights and interpretations alongside the works—reveals an unexpected and extraordinary artist who transformed trauma into creative acts. It also raises the question of the fragility of the sculptures on display, and of how complex it is to secure loans and transport them to a museum. Even packing has become an art: “For the most delicate pieces, 3D shells are created to encase them perfectly, minimising the risk of breakage; for works like the Torso Italico, you hold your breath.” Hecker recounts: “It sat for years in a courtyard on Via Panizza. One day I went there to ask if it could be loaned to the exhibition—and it was gone. In the end, I managed to secure it from the new owner. It took ten men to move it, with all the risks involved in bringing it to Venice.” The exhibition, a unique achievement in both works and narrative thread, remains open until 2 March 2026.