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, he 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 Frangi.