The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is planning a Lucio Fontana show in 2017—and The Art Newspaper understands that it could take place in the Breuer Building, formerly the home of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The Italian artist’s first and only US retrospective took place in 1977 at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which also presented a smaller show in 2006. “An exhibition at the Met will necessarily be all-encompassing,” a source says. A spokeswoman for the museum confirms that a Fontana show is “under consideration”. But the show has not been formally announced.
As institutions play catch-up, the market’s appetite for Fontana’s work appears to be increasing, with the current auction record standing at €19m in November 2013 for one of his Concetto Spaziale paintings. The first Fontana exhibition in London in more than a decade is scheduled to open on 8 October at the Italian gallery Tornabuoni Art’s new space (its sixth in total), just ahead of Frieze week and the Italian sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s.
