Lucio Fontana’s Justice (part of a series of abstract panels for the Milan courthouse in the 1950s) is a bold departure from figuration. Rather than depicting scales, judges, or lawgivers, Fontana’s canvas is stark, punctured, and slashed — a monochrome field ruptured by violent gashes.
This abstract representation of justice is unsettling. There is no Lady Justice, no order — just a surface broken, cut open, raw. Fontana was working in a post-war Italy still reckoning with Fascism, genocide, and systemic failure. His Justice reflects a profound skepticism: perhaps justice is not order but rupture — a wound in the fabric of society.
Legally, this challenges traditional iconography. It questions whether our symbols of law still mean anything after mass atrocity. Can the scales and sword of justice still represent fairness when entire legal systems have enabled repression?
Fontana offers no comfort — only the void. His slashes are literal breaches in the canvas, symbolizing loss, trauma, and the impossibility of full restoration. Justice, here, is not about restoration or fairness. It’s about the scar left behind when the law fails.
This work invites legal thinkers to ask: what does justice look like when the system breaks? What symbols remain when old ones collapse? Fontana’s Justice suggests that in the aftermath of legal violence, all we may have left are the cuts.