Cianne Fragione

Interviews by Brainard Carey

Cianne Fragione (b. 1952) is a multidisciplinary artist. 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.

Motetti: Flowers Grow/ Salty Breath, 2024, oil-based paint, pigment, walnut and black ink, graphite, oil pencils,
on paper, 42.5 x 35 in (107.95 x 88.9 cm), Image by Martin Seck

Bundles: Seacoasts / Among Fragrances / Winds / Decoy, 2024, oil-based paint, pigment, string, lace, fishing lures, and bone on canvas panel, 8 x 5 x 2 in (20.3 x 12.7 x 5.1 cm), Image by Martin Seck

The Clouds Travel like White Handkerchiefs of Goodbye, 2020 oil-based pigment, collage, graphite, on mylar 54 x 65 in (137.16 x 165.1 cm) Image by Martin Seck