Selected Works

All artworks

The history of the Italian photo of the last thirty years has meaningfully been characterized by the work of Franco Fontana.Started him to the profession in the first years Seventy, he generally devoted then immediately to the color photograph detested, especially in the prejudice of his "artisticly" compared with that of the traditional white-black. Fontana has reinvented the color as expressive mean and not only documentary, through an unpublished analysis, at times provocative, of the natural landscape and of the structured one, in the search of new signs, structures, surfaces chromatic correspondents to its creative imagination. This has allowed him to suggest spaces of metaphysical atmosphere, of an unknown and unlikely cosmos otherwise. Trees, clouds, people, shades appear as portraits of ghosts, inside geometric scenographies and intensely colored.

The images that we offer you constitute a testimony of the work of a photographer that represents with energy, to international level, a conclusive aspect of the actual physiognomy of the contemporary Italian photo.

Franco Fontana, one of the greatest italian photographers, was born on December 9th 1933 in Modena. He starts photographing in 1961 as amateur.  He has his first personal exhibition in Modena in 1968 and from then he gives an important turning point to his research. He has published more then 40 books with italian,japanese, french, german, swiss, american and spanish editions. He’ s exhibited worlwide with more then 400 partecipations personal and collectives and his work is in more then 50 museum’s collections all over the world. He’s kept workshops and conferences in New York for the Guggenheim Museum, Institute of Tecnology in Tokyo, Accademia of Bruxelles, Toronto University, Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Taipei, Torino and many other cities. He’s the responsible of the artistic direction of the Intenational Photomeeting of San Marino, of the Toscana Fotofestival.

He has his first personal exhibition in Modena in 1968 and from then he gives an important turning point to his research. He has published more then 40 books with italian, japanese, french, german, swiss, american and spanish editions. He’ s exhibited worlwide with more then 400 partecipations personal and collectives and his work is in more then 50 museum’s collections all over the world:

-    International Museum of Photography
-    G. Eastman House, Rochester
-    The Museum of Fine Arts of Boston
-    Ludwig Museum, Colonia
-    Museum of Modern Art, Norman Oklahoma
-    National Gallery of Pechino - Cina
-    The Australian National Gallery of Melbourne
-    University of Texas, Austin USA
-    Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
-    Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo
-    Museé d’Art Moderne, Paris
-    Museo de Arte San Paolo, Brasil
-    Kunsthaus Museum, Zurich
-    The Photographic Museum, Helsinki
-    Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco
-    Puskin State, Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
-    Victoria & Albert Museum, London
-    Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Torino
-    Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Texas USA
-    Deutch Bank, London
-    Banca Unicredit, Italy
-    UBS Unione Banche Svizzere
-    Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires


AWARDS AND HONORS

Kodak Photobucpreis - Baden Wurttemberg (Stoccarda, 1974)

Stoccarda Prix 1983 - Farbfoto Kalendar (Stoccarda, 1983)

Award FIAF - the directive Council of the FIAF names him “Maestro Fotografo Italiano” for his activity for the Photography and FIAF (Modena, 1984)

Award of Culture - Presidency the Ministers' Council (Roma, 1989)

Phothographic Society of Japan - The 150 Years of Photography Photographer Award (Tokyo, 1990)

Award Friuli Venezia Giulia (Gorizia, 1991)

Award City of Venice (Venezia, 1992)

Award City of Sorrento for Photography (Sorrento, 1993)

Award Guitarra 1993 (Cordoba, 1993)

Award Pisa for photography for the 650 anniversary of the foundation of the Ateneo (Pisa, 1994)

Award FIAF - the directive Council of the FIAF names him “Maestro Fotografo Italiano” for his activity for the Photography and FIAF (Torino, 1995)

Award Friuli Venezia Giulia per la fotografia (Spilimbergo, 1995)

Award “Una vita per la fotografia” (Benevento, 1998)

Award “Ciliegia d’oro” receives the honour of "Commedatore" for artistic worths of the Italian Republic (Vignola, 2000)

Award dell’Arte Città di Noto (Noto, 2004)

Laurea ad Honorem in Design eco compatibile- Politecnico of Torino (Torino, 2006)