Franco Fontana was born in Modena in 1933. Since the 1960s, he has been one of the great masters of color photography. His first studies on color, space, form, and light were presented in his first solo exhibition in Turin, at the Subalpina Società Fotografica in 1965, and in Modena in 1968.
He began his aesthetic inquiry in 1961, and in 1963, he exhibited at the Third International Biennial of Color in Vienna. Between the 1960s and 1970s, he published numerous books and held many solo and group exhibitions throughout Italy and Europe.
In 1979, a trip to the United States forced him to confront new urban spaces, profoundly different from the environment he had known until then. From these seemingly chaotic landscapes, lacking in harmony, he created the series Urban Landscape, works that rarely featured human figures. It was only later, with the series Presence Absence (late 1979-1980) that humans appeared in the form of shadows, with the artist simultaneously playing with architectural elements and reversing perspectives. In his exploration of American cities, Franco Fontana often depicted individuals accompanied by their shadow, a symbol, in some ways, of the unfathomable mystery of human nature.
In 1981, he held various workshops in Arles and Venice and published a black-and-white book printed by Lustrum Press (New York). In 1985, at the University of Turin, Fontana conducted a number of workshops that were later compiled in the book La scrittura fotografica by Liborio Termine.
In 1986, he began a fruitful collaboration with Alexander Liberman of Vogue USA, Vogue France, and also signed promotional campaigns for Volkswagen, Volvo, Ferrari, Grundig, Kodak, etc. He then signed several art calendars and numerous advertising campaigns, including for the fashion industry (Satoh, Versace, Hermès, etc.).
In 1989, he started collaborating with the magazine Il Venerdi, the weekly of the Italian daily La Repubblica, and in the same year, he received the Premio della Cultura Presidenza dei Ministri in Rome.
In 1995, he participated in the Venice Biennale with the exhibition A Century of Photographic Portraits in Italy 1895-1995.
In 2001, he was included in the Britannica Encyclopedia and represented Italy, alongside De Chirico, Schifano, and Ceroli, at the Biennale at the Buenos Aires Museum of Art.
Since 2000, Fontana has been conducting a study on the microcosm of signs and landscape fragments on the urban street (Asfalti).
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