Laurent Dominique Fontana trained at the School of Architecture and the School of Fine Arts in Geneva. The son of a magistrate, he began his artistic career in 1958 and won the Young Painters’ Prize in 1962. He taught at the Geneva School of Fine Arts from 1962 to 1974, then founded the “Artistic Expressions” section at the Higher School of Visual Arts (ESAV) in 1975. His numerous study trips to America, Eastern Europe, and Japan shaped his political awareness and influenced his shift from a purely aesthetic approach to a reflection on human vulnerability and the confrontation with violence.
Since the 1960s, Fontana has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Switzerland and internationally. His works are featured in museums and private collections in Spain, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, and Switzerland. Among his emblematic projects are the monumental installations “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” (1993) and “Provenances Chechnya” (2004), as well as public works in Geneva, Neuchâtel, and Verbier. His work has earned him several grants and awards, including the Federal Grant in 1982 and the Calame Prize in 1962.
Fontana’s work explores the tragic tension that runs through the human condition: pain, love, solitude, and determination. His sculptures reflect a physical and emotional engagement with the essential materials of wood, stone, and time. The figures he creates, male or female, at war or in a dream, traverse the emptiness of space with intense and paradoxical gestures, at once voluptuous, tense, and elusive.