Éditions Contrejour : Franco Fontana : America
We knew of Franco Fontana, his landscapes or his seascapes, in which he works composition, an ample and colour composition where the graphic is purity and law and of which the Skyline book appeared in 1978 is a result. The subject of the American metropolises accompanied by their inevitable urban tumult seemed a priori to go against the coherence of his work prior to the beautiful line and neat chromatic areas. So what was he going to be looking for in the great American metropolises during his various trips from 1985 to 2001?
While his usual compositions are of a regular, readable and articulate classicism, his American images are undeniably imbued with Italianness with the taste for harmony and geometric balance of the Renaissance fathers, the construction of Masaccio’s urban backgrounds. , even the mathematical composition of a Piero della Francesca. At the same time his photographs draw simultaneously from the graphic source of Straight Photography and the colourist source of Color Field Painting. The graphics of the scenes flatten them and tighten their depth of field. Fontana intends to stay on the surface. The colored bands of the landscapes of yesteryear here become stepped planes. The choice of the overall plan makes the characters sketched outlines more than individuals confronted with the light of the cities, the reflections, the shop windows, the street furniture which allow him to express his talent as a colorist.
“During my stays in the USA, I recognized my idea of the urban landscape, I found what was already in me and I gathered what I had sown for a long time.”
Franco Fontana: America
Preface by Muriel Adrien
Editions Contrejour
Release November 2020
Format: 23 x 28 cm
88 pages
ISBN: 979-10-90294-40-0
Price: 35 euros
