Giovanni Frangi ranks amongst the most important and internationally most promising Italian artists of his generation (*1959). An intense exhibition activity that begins in the early 80s, leads him to prestigious institutional and gallery venues worldwide.
Thought at first sight abstract compositions, do his canvases of often monumental size contain allusive landscapes, views on different places from bird’ s eye view or other reduced and strongly stylised figurative elements.
Dominated by a decisive colouring in cool grey, white or black tones or vibrating warm earth tones, his pictures stand between abstract expressionism, the informal tradition and a contemporary approach of surface painting.
Lately Frangi expands his artistic vocabulary to the media photography, on which he intervenes pictorially. Since 2006 he creates various series of photo-paintings on canvas, parallel to the classical paintings on canvas and paper, which all decline the landscape theme. The photographs obtain an often unexpected depth and expressiveness through the pictorial intervention.
Giovanni Frangi is born on may 12th 1959 in Milan. From 1978 – 1983 he studies painting at the Brera academy of Fine Arts (Milan). His first solo-exhibition takes places in 1983 at the Galleria Bussola, Turin. An intense exhibition activity follows, which not only leads him to various prestigious, international gallery and institutional venues but also allows him to collaborate with such important Italian art-critics as Achille Bonito Oliva or Giovanni Testori.
After two decades of intense research and preoccupation with the media painting, the artist begins to look out for new medial possibilities of artistic expression. In 2000 the exhibitionGiovanni Frangi – Sculture, una mostra per l’estate (Giovanni Frangi – Sculptures, a summer exhibition) takes places at the Lawrence Rubin Gallery, Milan. It featured big size paintings on paper as well as an outdoor installation entitled Fiordifragola . This is the beginning of Frangi’ s sculptural oeuvre.
In 2004 the artist then creates the surround installation Nobu at Elba in the Scuderie of the Villa Menafoglio Litta Panza in Biumo Superiore near Varese. It consists of four huge paintings on canvas, measuring a total of forty meters and about twenty sculptures in burned foam rubber, on which light is projected in regular intervals, in order to simulate the impression one is getting when standing close to a river by night, in a completely uninhabited landscape.
In 2006 he installs View Master in the Florentine Gallery Poggiali e Forconi. The installation was a natural diorama in foam rubber, divided into two halves. The interior could only be perceived through a tiny hole in the construction and represented the sea bottom one the one hand and the snowmelt on the other.
In the same year the first photo-paintings on canvas occur. Frangi uses the emulsion print technique to produce pictures onto he then applies his usual pigments.