ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Gonzalo Fonseca's Reston works, his 1968 contribution to an experimental park project in the Bronx, his 1969 New York sidewalk sculpture, and the 1968 Torre de los vientos in Mexico City. It argues that Fonseca's expansion beyond the constructive concerns of the Taller led him to create abstract sculptural works that engaged audiences through phenomenological relationships. The chapter highlights the evolution of Fonseca's oeuvre outside of the confines of the Taller and highlights the work as involved and important contribution to postwar abstraction within the international context. The public works made between 1965 and 1969 illustrate the artist's evolving concern that the works and their context affect in the viewer physical and phenomenological experiences. The context of Fonseca's public works—as projects tied to postwar architecture and urbanization, as well as trends in public art—resulted in the undermining of the separation between life and play as defined by Huizinga.
