The Fontana Room
The room is named after Lucio Fontana, the author of the slashed canvas of 1965, set in a splendid gilt frame above a Louis XV chest of drawers in lacquered wood, which dominates the space, a passageway between the large Billiard Room and the smaller 19th-century Room, offering lateral access to what was once a square atrium open to the outside.
Despite the limited space, the walls are hung with works of great importance for the history of the Cerruti Collection, including the untitled watercolour of 1918 by Wassily Kandinsky that was the first item bought by Cerruti in the late 1960s. Since it is this small and precious work by Kandinsky that marks the birth of the collection as a whole, great significance attaches to its location. Hanging on one of the pillars in the basement, a slender support of the entire building above, the work metaphorically constitutes a cornerstone on which the edifice of this extraordinary collection was built up little by little with the other substantial blocks.
Among the other works in this room, mention should also be made of a small work in tempera on paper by Franz Kline (c. 1955), purchased by Cerruti after visiting the monographic exhibition held by the Castello di Rivoli in 2004–05, an early watercolour (c. 1939) by Wols, the pastel Les Tendresses cruelles (Cruel Kindnesses, 1926) by Giorgio de Chirico and Jean Dubuffet’s Passant furtif (Furtive Passerby, 1954).
