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OverviewWinterberries, 2025
"Desire is much like painting in that it can obliterate or invent memory, altering the way we see, touch and taste things."
Louis Fratino creates deeply intimate paintings and drawings from personal memory and the quietly sublime offerings of everyday life. His figurative subjects include lovers, friends, family, and the artist himself, rendering the human body as a site of vast emotive expression. Sexuality, intimacy, and queer desire are understood as natural and constant, suffusing the atmosphere of his scenes in vibrant and comforting familiarity. Invoking an art historical lineage of modernist painters—including Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe—Fratino’s work mines the possibilities of communion and connection, amplified through the seductive power of the painted surface.
Louis Fratino (born 1993, Annapolis, Maryland) received his BFA in Painting with concentration in Illustration from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2015). He is a recipient of a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Painting, Berlin (2015-16) and a Yale Norfolk Painting Fellowship, Norfolk, Connecticut in 2014. His first institutional solo exhibition, Louis Fratino. Satura, is on view at Centro Pecci through May 11, 2025. In 2024, Fratino’s paintings were featured in the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
Fratino’s work is included in the collections of The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
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Louis Fratino: Satura
Centro Pecci09.26.24–05.11.25Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, Italy, presents Louis Fratino. Satura, the artist's first solo institutional exhibition. Curated by Stefano Collicelli Cagol, Satura features paintings, sculptures, and drawings that explore Fratino's sustained relationship with Italian culture and history.
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Exhibitions
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Difficulty is cheerfully accepted
02.21 – 04.05.25Sikkema Malloy Jenkins is pleased to present Difficulty is cheerfully accepted , a presentation of ceramic sculptural works by Kathy Butterly, Louis Fratino, Magalie Guérin, and Heidi Lau. The title...Explore -
Louis Fratino
In bed and abroad 10.27 – 12.09.23Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to announce In bed and abroad , a solo exhibition of works by Louis Fratino. This will be the artist’s third show at the...Explore -
Louis Fratino & Tony Feher
09.09 – 10.16.21Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present a two-person exhibition of works by Louis Fratino and Tony Feher, on view September 9 through October 16. Featuring a series of...Explore -
Louis Fratino
Morning 10.09 – 11.14.20They have called me “The exclusive poet of love.” And perhaps this is true. But the wind here that blows on each blade of grass and the noises of the...Explore
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