Noble Colors
The exhibition “Franco Fontana: Urbani” at Atlas Gallery in London celebrates the artists’ devotion to color, before the Art World believed in it.
The photographs span from 1965 to 2017, including rare vintage prints, unique Polaroids and photo-collages. Color once used to be considered “the domain of advertising and family souvenirs, belonging either to a purely commercial or an amateur world”. Franco Fontana embraced it in the 1950s and placed it at the very core of his research.
LIDO DELLE NAZIONI, 1973 © Franco Fontana, Courtesy of Atlas Gallery
Los Angeles, Mondrian, 1991 © Franco Fontana, Courtesy of Atlas Gallery
Houston, 1985 © Franco Fontana, Courtesy of Atlas Gallery
ZURIGO, 1983 © Franco Fontana, Courtesy of Atlas Gallery
His 50 mm lens didn’t allow him to isolate distant details, so he cropped a selected part of the frame during the printing process, creating uncanny, abstract compositions where objects cease to hold their function, becoming color shapes. The bright walls of California and Caribbean Islands created an especially fertile ground for his research, which includes polaroids on public view for the first time.
LIDO DELLE NAZIONI, 1973 © Franco Fontana, Courtesy of Atlas Gallery
HAVANA 2017 © Franco Fontana, Courtesy of Atlas Gallery
Ibiza, 2008 © Franco Fontana, Courtesy of Atlas Gallery
Los Angeles, 1990 © Franco Fontana, Courtesy of Atlas Gallery
The exhibition “Franco Fontana: Urbani” is on view at Atlas Gallery in London until May 4th.
