Signorina seduta

With a technical freedom and creative daring equal to those of this later works, Fontana would in 1934 work on various abstract sculptures in iron and coloured gesso which were exhibited in a controversial one-man show held in January 1935 at the Galleria del Milione; around this time he also produced the abstract form of the Bestetti tomb (Varese Cemetery) in grey marble and travertine. This was also the period in which he modelled his "Fiocinatore" in polychrome gesso (winner of the Tantardini Prize at the "V Mostra sindacale lombarda") and this "Signorina seduta", exhibited on the same occasion. This work, cast in bronze from an original in painted gesso, was purchased from the artist's widow, Teresita Rasini, in 1976. She states that the seated young lady depicted is Jole Bonifacini Fontana, wife of the artist's brother, Tito. According to Edoardo Persico - who in his 1936 monograph on the artist decribed this as the sculptor's masterpiece - the work depicts "the breakdown od volumes, the striving to work sculptures and painting together in a way that is very different to that one finds in Rosso. All the sculptor's artistic experiences, all his obsessions with colour, come together perfectly in this work, and in that black dress which adds an unforgettable note to the work". Comparable to the now-lost "Vittoria dell'aria", a work in blue-and gold-painted gesso produced in the same year for the "Mostra dell'Aeronautica" (where it was in fact rejected), this "Signorina" might be seen as a rethinking of the stylistic abbreviations to be seen in the work being produced by Arturo Martini; this is particularly clear in the summary rendition of the hair and the way the artist merely hints at the features that break the surface of the face. The black dress and the red-lacquered nails - together with the spontaneus gesture of a hand lifted to adjust the hair before an invisible mirror - are all iconographical components drawn from everyday contemporary life. Here, they are all combined with the classical theme of the reclining female figure and with the highly significant presence of gold. Used in a non-naturalistic way, this a-temporal and ritualistic colour covers face and body of lean and anti-academic modelling, rendering the entire figure more abstract. [Mariella Milan]