 Born in Rosario, to Italian immigrant parents, he was the son of the sculptor Luigi Fontana (1865 — 1946).Fontana spent the first years of his life in Argentina and then was sent to Italy in 1905, where he stayed until 1922, working as a sculptor with his father, and then on his own.Already in 1926, he participated in the first exhibition of Nexus, a group of young Argentine artists working in Rosario de Santa Fé.