Lucio Fontana, born in Argentina in 1899, moved to Italy in 1905 to go to school. After fighting in the First World War with the Italian army, he moved back to Argentina in 1921 to make sculptures for graveyards and later became an art teacher in Buenos Aires where his students were introduced to a new conceptual approach to making art in a format that combined art and sculpture. He returned to Milan in 1947 where he found his studio and all his work completely destroyed. In 1949, he began a series of piercing canvases with a knife and in doing this 'destructive act', believed it led to the creation of infinite space. These holes and cuts were an opportunity for the ‘unseen’ to carry meaning. The concept of the void made the invisible space the important concept of the art. The cut itself was the art. He would cover canvases with layers of thick oil paint, some applied by hand and some by brush. Using a scalpel or Stanley knife he created cuts into the surface. He would often line the reverse of his canvases with a black gauze so that the darkness behind the cuts would create a "mysterious sense of illusion and depth".

“I have invented a formula that I think I cannot perfect. I succeeded in giving those looking at my work a sense of spatial calm, of cosmic rigor, of serenity with regard to the infinite. Further than this I could not go.”