Immanenza e 'sacro' nella lettura delle opere di Fontana di soggetto religioso svolta da Enrico Crispolti

The article is essentially a reprise of the contributions that Enrico Crispolti gave through various essays on the subject of Fontana's sacred works of art. Crispolti is accredited as the most accuntable expert on Font ana's work and personality, having had the chance to cultivate personal relationships with artist, attested by a rich correspondence with him, and having been the editor of the Catalogue Raisonne of his works. Starting from the analysis of Fontana's first Via Crucis (1947), written when the work first reappeared, in 1988, through the last readings of Fontana's three Via Crucis, exhibited together in Milan in 2011, Crispolti's position is that Fontana wasn't really motivated by religious intentions. Moved by a strong attention to the relations between matter and the 'multi-dimensionality' of space attained by scientific processes, Fontana interpreted the way religious themes could connect the history of art with his new vision of an art of space-matter transcending the physical and figurative conventions. The only way, for Crispolti, to read Fontana's sacred works according to spiritual categories is their problematic declaration to go beyond the visible, though with firm roots in the 'here and now' of the vital process.