Giovanni Frangi

Giovanni Frangi was born in Milan on May 12, 1959. He began painting very young. After a regular cursus of studies (he graduated from the Brera Academy in 1982), he exhibited in a group show at the Rotonda in via Besana in Milan in 1982. In 1983 he organized his first one-man show at Galleria La Bussola in Turin. Other solo shows followed at the Galleria Bergamini, Milan (1986), presented in the catalogue by Achille Bonito Oliva, and at the Galleria Poggiali and Forconi, Florence (1987) where he returned to exhibit again (1992, 1997). In 1992, thanks to award ontained on the occasion of the XII Quadriennale in Rome, Giovanni Frangi exhibited in the Sala del Cenacolo at the Chamber of Deputies in Montecitorio the cycle La fuga di Renzo: a series of canvases arranged on the four sides of the environment, according to a regular scan of the space. The cycle represented an ideal journey into the lagoon, starting from a port, at sunset, to arrive in the middle of the night in front of an industrial plant illuminated by the moon. For the first time Frangi conceived an exhibition not as a set of individual works, but as a unitary project: it was the beginning of the collaboration with Giovanni Agosti. In 1997 an anthological exhibition at Palazzo Sarcinelli in Conegliano offered an overview of the work until then carried out by the artist, through seventy-five paintings made between 1986 and 1996, largely focused on the theme of the landscape, and in particular on the representation of ring roads and motorway junctions. From 1999 Il richiamo della foresta was held at the Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan: thirteen canvases laid on the ground, held up by iron supports, as if they were theater scenes, among which it was possible to venture, feeling the changing seasons. Also in 1999 at the Venice Biennale, Uncle Vanja by Chekhov debuted under the direction of Federico Tiezzi: the curtain – once again a forest – was a work by Giovanni Frangi.

In the meantime there have been numerous foreign gallery appearances: Galerie du Banneret, Bern (1990, 1992); Medici Gallery, Carmel, California (1994); Bourbon Street Gallery, New Orleans (1995); Contemporary Art Center, Schalkwijk near Utrecht (1999); Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, Hong Kong (1999); Brookings Gallery, San Francisco (2000); Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Santa Monica, California (2001). The relation with Galleria dello Scudo was established in 2000 by his solo exhibition Viaggio in Italia, inspired by images of characteristic places of the suggestive Italian landscape. Giovanni Frangi resumed his commitment to graphic art. In 2004 in the Scuderia Grande of Villa Menafoglio Litta Panza in Biumo Superiore, near Varese, Nobu at Elba was presented, an installation composed of four huge painted canvases, for a total of forty meters, and about twenty sculptures in burnt foam, on which light is projected at regular intervals, in order to make an emotion similar to that felt at night near a stream of water, in an uninhabited environment. In the winter of 2004-2005 the one-man show Take-off, curated by Lóránd Hegyi and Demetrio Paparoni, followed at Galleria dello Scudo. In the following years there were several one-man exhibitions in public spaces: Pasadena, Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Udine (2008); Giardini pubblici, MART, Rovereto (2010); Divina-Wallpaper, Palazzo Credito Bergamasco, Bergamo (2010); Straziante, meravigliosa bellezza del creato, Villa Manin, Passariano di Codroipo, Udine (2011); Sherazade, Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa (2013); Mollate le vele. Uno stendardo per Jonas, MAXXI, Rome (2014); Alles ist Blatt, Giardino Botanico, Padua (2014); Usodimare, CAMeC, La Spezia (2016). Also worth mentioning is his presence at 54. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte. La Biennale di Venezia, Italian Pavilion (2011).