Cianne Fragione (b. 1952) American, Large Oil on Canvas. Bright green abstract shapes. Signed on the back, twice, and dated 1989 and 1996. Inscribed throughout: "Top," titled: "Her Three Loves," "The Garden Near the Ocean," "Her partner, her children (not all in that order)," and "I painted this one day because I wanted to fee close to you - and I did."
Overall: 28 1/2 X 31 1/2 in.
Sight: 27 X 30 in.
Depth: 2 1/2 in.
#3760 .
Cianne Fragione was born in 1952 in Hartford, Connecticut into a community composed chiefly of Sicilian immigrant families. She grew up in a large multigenerational household, raised by a mother from Turin, Italy and a father from Sicily, and she has credited her upbringing for developing an appreciation for the religious culture, symbols, and landscapes of Southern Italy. Fragione’s career in the arts began as a contemporary dancer with P. Stone Dance Company in Hartford, Connecticut and later the Hartford Ballet Company, continuing into other forms of dance, a practice that continues to drive her art through an appreciation of motion and gesture. In 1981 she graduated from Goddard College with a B.F.A. in painting and mixed media. In 1987 she received her M.F.A. in Painting/Mixed Media at John F. Kennedy University Fiberworks Center for the Arts in Berkeley, California, where her artistic advisor/mentor was Jay DeFeo. While at JFK she was invited to be a guest graduate student at The University of California, Berkeley, where she studied under Brian Wall and Anna Valentina-Murch. As a graduate student she also had tutorials with Manuel Neri at The University of California, Davis and Frank Lobdell at Stanford University. She became well-known for her mixed-media works that incorporate found objects and textiles with heavily layered oil paint and collage. Fragione’s work draws from a wide variety of influences from Renaissance artists like Giovanni Bellini, Titian, and Agnolo Bronzino to 20th Century artists like John Singer Sargent, Cy Twombly and Joan Mitchell. Her interactions with Bay Area artists also imbued her paintings with a strong reliance on gesture and natural color. Earlier in her career, Fragione switched between painting and assemblage, but since the late 1990s she has developed the two together into a fully idiosyncratic style of labor-intensive paintings with highly textured surfaces. In 2003, she presented her series of 14 pieces, No Greater Love: Stations of the Cross From a Woman’s Perspective, at the Indianapolis Art Center in a group exhibition on the intersection of religion and politics. Assembling debris from a Catholic church being renovated in Louisville, Kentucky, Fragione reinterpreted the well-known motif of Christ’s execution through the eyes of the women who knew him. Her use of old newspapers, vintage textiles, photographs and other fragments frames the narrative as one consisting of personal relationships rather than abstract ideals. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Italy in numerous independent galleries, as well as in public institutions like the Textile Museum and the Katzen Art Center. Her pieces can also be found in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford University, and Georgetown College. Today she is based in Washington, D.C., where she continues to live and paint.
