Initiated in 1949, the "buchi" (holes) were Fontana's first expression of this new, groundbreaking concept, in which he included space not only as an illusion, but also in real terms by piercing or slashing the canvas.
Initially, he created works on paper, but then he also created canvases that he perforated and thus opened up into three-dimensional space. From this time onwards, he titled all his works "Concetti Spaziali" - spatial concepts. The physical penetration of the once two-dimensional and, in the figurative representation, illusionistic picture surface not only destroyed this representational space limited by the edges of the picture field, but also definitively destroyed the pictorial function of representation, imitation or illusion. The space in the picture thus became real, the pictorial space itself delimited beyond the picture surface.
Fontana turned the canvas into a place where actions can take place and energy can flow. "I don't want to make a painting," Fontana explained. "I want to open the space".
