CIANNE FRAGIONE
Cianne Fragione (b. 1952) is an American-born multidisciplinary artist of Italian heritage who lives and works in Washington, D.C. With roots in the San Francisco Bay Area Beat and Funk art milieus, she has developed her own process-oriented artistic vocabulary over the past four decades that crosses boundaries between abstract painting and sculpture, and between object and image. A striking combination of oil paint, mixed-media materials, found objects, and textiles characterizes her signature style. Each piece, whether two- or three-dimensional, is built slowly over lengthy periods, becoming a dense synthesis of influences and personal perspectives, including mid-century gestural abstraction and the physical fluency of her early training as a professional dancer. While a sense of space and movement dominates her two-dimensional works, her assemblage pieces tend to be denser and more corporeal. Her most recent works respond to two collections of poems by Italian poet and writer Eugenio Montale: Mediterraneo and Ossi di Seppia.
Fragione has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including at St. Mary’s College Museum of Art, Moraga, CA; Georgetown College, KY; Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery, New York, NY; American University Museum, Washington, D.C.; John D. Calandra Italian American Institute of Queens College, CUNY, New York, NY; Associazione di Museo D’Arte Contemporaneo Italiano, Catanzaro, Italy; Harmony Hall Regional Center, Washington, MD; University of Scranton Art Museum, Scranton, PA; The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.; Art in Embassies, Geneva, Sofia, Bulgaria, and Vilnius, Lithuania; Indianapolis Art Center, IN; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Gallery, CA. Her works are held in numerous public collections, including the Baltimore Museum of Art MD; DC Commission Art Bank Collection; Art in Embassies Permanent Collection, U.S. State Department, Guadalajara, Mexico; St. Mary’s College Museum of Art, CA; Italian American Museum, D.C; Department of Special Collections, Cecil H. Green Library, Stanford University, CA; Comune di Monasterace, Calabria, IT; among other museum and private collections. Fragione has been the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, and residencies, including Art Omi; the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Fellowship; The Legacy Project (Saving the Legacy) supported by the Joan Mitchell Foundation; Studio dei Nipoti artist residency, Monasterace, Italy; Soaring Gardens, Laceyville, PA; Spoleto Study Abroad in Spoleto, Italy; and an Artist-in-Institution grant from the California Arts Council. Sacramento CA. She was nominated for the Joan Mitchell Painting and Sculpture Award; and twice for the Anonymous Was a Woman Award for artistic achievement. She received her MFA (1987) in Painting/Mixed Media at John F. Kennedy University Fiberworks Center for the Arts, Berkeley, CA. During this time, she was a guest graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a fellowship that enabled her to work with artists associated with the beat and funk movements in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1981, she received her BFA from Goddard College in Plainfield, VT.