Franco Fontana’s aesthetic research focuses on the abstract expression of architecture, as well as the use of colour and patterns. In Fabbri 2018 the artist creates an interpretation of the urban landscape, focusing on the paradigmatic meaning of an architectonic design of intense formal value. The place (a detail of the seventeenth-century façade of the New Cathedral of Brescia) is not as important as the ability to appreciate the structural and formal expression of a classical motif. Fontana follows the rules of composition, but still manages to reveal the enigmatic nature of the image, namely the idea of a historical Italian provincial city concurring with the “classical nature” of a product which forms part of our memory. In the proportional principles of the extremely high Corinthian columns, his gaze has managed to capture a perfectly balanced backdrop with the pattern of a Fabbri jar.
In the urban scene, Fontana sees the photographs he wants to take, and detects a symbolic correspondence in the arrangement of spaces, and the organisation and balance of elements. Before even taking the photograph, he determines the ideal angle for the pedestal on which the very high Corinthian columns are placed, and realises that it is the ideal backdrop for the Fabbri jar.
It is as classical as the proportions of the columns, as a product which forms part of our memories just as we remember a monument itself. In this fragment of an urban landscape, space - the columns, the shape of the jar, and the roundness of the fruit - is the key element. The arrangement of colour is also important, with the Botticino marble that still preserves its rare colourful veins, forming a monochromatic backdrop. In the foreground the shiny blue decorations of the Fabbri jar and the bright red of the succulent fruits are colours used to aid the spatial organisation of the work.