Inspired by Futurism, Fontana sought to escape the “prison” of the flat picture surface to explore movement, time, and space. In 1949 he first developed his Spatial Concepts, puncturing and piercing the surfaces of sheets of paper to reach behind and beyond the illusionistic plane into what he called “a free space.” In the late 1950s Fontana began to slash linear cuts into stretched canvases; shedding its materiality, line became coextensive with infinite space.
Gallery label from On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, November 21, 2010-February 7, 2011.