Lot Essay
Louis Fratino’s Flower Market is a testament to the artist’s unparalleled command of color, texture, and emotion. At over seven feet tall, this large-scale painting absorbs the viewer into a scene of quotidian beauty, filled with lush flowers and plants. Packed with the hustle-and-bustle of the flower market, the various bouquets fill the center of the composition. Along the lower edge, a dog goes about its daily rituals, surrounded by discarded newspapers, while in the upper right a couple selects their own blooms to take home. Although best known for his paintings centered on couples and single male figures, in Flower Market, Fratino extends his insightful gaze to the flowers themselves. Usually included in paintings as decorative props, here they become the central subjects of the painting, perfectly counterbalancing the gray cobblestones and dark umbrellas that frame their vibrant display.
Fratino’s work is intensely art historical, with references to Pablo Picasso, Marsden Hartley, and David Hockney. In the present work, he evokes the scenes of urban leisure that formed the basis of Impressionism a century and a half ago. Also relevant is Gustave Caillebotte’s iconic Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877, Art Institute of Chicago), whose central pair of figures mirrors the one in Flower Market. Caillebotte’s canvas was radical for its asymmetrical composition and its distinctively modern flair, and the same could be said for Fratino’s work. Parallels can also be drawn with Diego Rivera’s verdant flower market scenes, as with his famed The Flower Vendor (1949, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid), which likewise fills the canvas to its very edge with flora. There is also a similarity in style, with both Rivera and Fratino using quasi-Cubist techniques to productively destabilize our relationship to the image. The Brooklyn-based artist’s paintings are decidedly contemporary, but they also emerge from a lineage of the world’s greatest artists from the nineteenth century onward.
Fratino’s critically acclaimed work has become central to a revitalization of figurative painting. His work is currently included in the 2024 Venice Biennale exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere, as well as Some Dogs Go to Dallas: A Selection of Artworks from the Collection of Pamela and David Hornik at the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas. In 2023, he was included in the influential exhibition Brave New World: 16 Painters for the 21st Century at the Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, The Netherlands, and can also be found in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Baltimore Museum of Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The artist’s first monograph, which features an interview with the legendary painter Carroll Dunham together with a full page illustration of the present work, will be released in May 2024.
Fratino explains, “I make paintings of the people I love, from memory. I want to make work that is tender and generous and optimistic” (L. Fratino, quoted in J. Vojdani, “Come Softly to Me: An Interview with Louis Fratino,” Columbia Journal, May 3, 2019). Fratino’s subject in Flower Market is not just a display of painterly virtuosity, but also the loving, everyday activities of a shared life. As critic Durga Chew-Bose writes in Artforum, “…The artist’s soldering gaze fuses soft power with decelerated, beautiful immediacy” (D. Chew-Bose, “Openings: Louis Fratino,” Artforum, March 2021).
Fratino’s work is intensely art historical, with references to Pablo Picasso, Marsden Hartley, and David Hockney. In the present work, he evokes the scenes of urban leisure that formed the basis of Impressionism a century and a half ago. Also relevant is Gustave Caillebotte’s iconic Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877, Art Institute of Chicago), whose central pair of figures mirrors the one in Flower Market. Caillebotte’s canvas was radical for its asymmetrical composition and its distinctively modern flair, and the same could be said for Fratino’s work. Parallels can also be drawn with Diego Rivera’s verdant flower market scenes, as with his famed The Flower Vendor (1949, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid), which likewise fills the canvas to its very edge with flora. There is also a similarity in style, with both Rivera and Fratino using quasi-Cubist techniques to productively destabilize our relationship to the image. The Brooklyn-based artist’s paintings are decidedly contemporary, but they also emerge from a lineage of the world’s greatest artists from the nineteenth century onward.
Fratino’s critically acclaimed work has become central to a revitalization of figurative painting. His work is currently included in the 2024 Venice Biennale exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere, as well as Some Dogs Go to Dallas: A Selection of Artworks from the Collection of Pamela and David Hornik at the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas. In 2023, he was included in the influential exhibition Brave New World: 16 Painters for the 21st Century at the Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, The Netherlands, and can also be found in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Baltimore Museum of Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The artist’s first monograph, which features an interview with the legendary painter Carroll Dunham together with a full page illustration of the present work, will be released in May 2024.
Fratino explains, “I make paintings of the people I love, from memory. I want to make work that is tender and generous and optimistic” (L. Fratino, quoted in J. Vojdani, “Come Softly to Me: An Interview with Louis Fratino,” Columbia Journal, May 3, 2019). Fratino’s subject in Flower Market is not just a display of painterly virtuosity, but also the loving, everyday activities of a shared life. As critic Durga Chew-Bose writes in Artforum, “…The artist’s soldering gaze fuses soft power with decelerated, beautiful immediacy” (D. Chew-Bose, “Openings: Louis Fratino,” Artforum, March 2021).