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Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968)

Concetto spaziale, Attese (Spatial Concept Expectations) (c.1959)

Italian artist Lucio Fontana is remembered for his sculptures and as the founder of Spatialism, introducing perforations and incisions to the surface of monochrome abstract canvases that integrated three dimensional space and voids into two dimensional paintings.

The process involved priming the canvas with watery distemper and making the incisions whilst the canvas was damp. As the canvas dried it contracted, causing the edges of the cut to curl - outwards or inwards depending whether the cut was from the front or rear of the canvas. The slit would be enlarged with the artist's fingers and the reverse of the canvas lined with black gauze to create an illusion of depth. From 1958, he adopted matte monochrome surfaces - using watercolour paints - to focus the viewers gaze on the cuts. Canvases with a single, central vertical slash were seen as representing the vagina.

In the 1960s Fontana supported the American "Destruction Art - Destroy to Create" movement in New York, which was the germ of the idea for John Smith's defence. Paintings in galleries defaced by slashing are, unfortunately, not uncommon.

One of the most infamous was by suffragette Mary Richardson who added seven slashes to Diego Velazquez's Rokeby Venus at London's National Gallery in 1914. A Barnett Newman abstract - large colour field of red with blue and yellow side strips - was cut with a knife in 1986, the culprit reoffending when released from prison.

It is wrong to consider the slashes (Tagli) as Fontana's best works, but they are what he is best remembered for.

The John Smith account of creation is completely fictional.