Whether recession is really giving way to recovery will be put to the test in Paris on Thursday when art lovers and investors will be tempted into paying millions at a rare Italian exhibition featuring mono-coloured canvases emblazoned with just one or more slashes of a knife.

Sixty works by Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), Italy’s most sought-after contemporary artist as founder of the post-war Spatialism movement, will go on show in a new gallery opening in Paris’s exclusive Avenue Matignon. Four dozen are for sale.