Franco Fontana's abstract landscapes present the world as complementary splices of colour, land and sky formed from blocks of yellow, green and blue, and urban landscapes seen as grids of colourful asphalt, brick and concrete. ‘For me, colour represents life where the heart and thoughts collide. I see my thoughts in colour, I keep the colour in my interpretation,' says the 1933-born Italian photographer.
Modena-born Fontana was an early pioneer of colour photography, bringing a spectrum of vivid shades to traditional grayscale formats. His skill as an abstract colourist has earned him comparisons with artists including Newman, Rothko, and de Staël. Now, Fontana's highly saturated artworks have been given a new sartorial life, in a collaboration with Sportmax.
For the fifth edition of the fellow Italian's Denim Culture collection, which sees the label collaborate with creatives, the brand has transformed eight of Fontana's most renowned works into images on fabric, from denim dresses to jackets, jeans to t-shirts. These feature as framed landscapes with act as panels on clothing, or as repeated abstract prints which swathe entire silhouettes.
Fontana also shot the look book images which accompany the release of Sportmax's Denim Culture collaboration, characterised by models posing against abstract urban shapes, like prismatic tiles and pillars. His favourite piece in the offering? Pieces which captures his photography of asphalt, which has a pattern that ‘continues to roll on through jeans and dresses, like a never ending journey.'
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