One of the twentieth century's most dazzling and idiosyncratic innovators, the Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) is best known for his invention in the late 1940s of the concept of Spatialism. This involved the use of new media and methods for projecting images, such as neon and TV, and the breaking open by slashing or puncturing of painted and sculpted surfaces. In this film, critics, friends and other artists associated with the Spatialist movement offer a wide-ranging assessment of Fontana's achievement, giving overall coherence to a career marked both by an extraordinarily rapid series of experimental new departures and by work in many different media. His influence on later artists has been diverse, and his theories are placed here in relation not only to the artistic trends of the period but also to their subsequent elaboration by others. The genial personal picture of Fontana that emerges gives weight to his statement that 'the artist's sole duty is to keep feeling for humanity alive'.