The Mosaicists’ Group was established in 1948; the members of this entity were Giuseppe Salietti as Director, Zelo Molducci in charge of administration, Lino Melano, Ines Morigi, Libera Musiani, Romolo Papa, Eda Pratella, Antonio Rocchi and Renato Signorini.
There was a great wealth of opportunities in the cultural climate after World War 2: first of all, it was urgent to restore the ancient mosaic works that had suffered damage.
Nevertheless, this period was also the opportunity to reaffirm the uniqueness of Ravenna’s heritage and to tackle modern artistic expressions. This was the scenario for the Modern Mosaics Exhibition, now permanently housed in the Ravenna Art Museum, in which mosaicists came into contact with artists of the calibre of Afro, Campigli, Capogrossi, Chagall, Guttuso, Mathieu and Vedova.
In the 1950s too, Lucio Fontana, who had already become acquainted with Byzantine mosaics in the 1930s, explored the dimensional possibilities of mosaics in Spatial Concepts of the Stones series.
His participation in Milan Triennial V in 1933 with Sironi and Severini gave Fontana the opportunity to consider new paths, partly arising from the works and theoretical writings exhibited, including those of Gino Severini, who maintained that mosaics were an expressive contemporary art medium.
Light is the constructing element in Lucio Fontana’s works: it marks out the fluid and immaterial space of the colour surface, generating a deep-seated connection between the space of the work and the space of the observer. It is an essential evocation of Byzantine abstraction processes, of a mosaic syntax with which the artist started experimenting in 1938.
Not only do works like Spatial Concept in 1952 rework Byzantine concepts but they also seem to be clear references to certain aspects of mosaic technique, as in the use of fragments of glass on canvas, recomposed by the use of light.