Louis Fratino

Louis Fratino (b. 1993) creates paintings, drawings, and sculptures that depict intimate personal experiences and domestic affairs, frequently centering contemporary queer life and the male body. In portraying all manner of subjects garnered from his immediate circles and through observation, he connects an exuberant palette of bold, high-contrast colors with expressive figuration that cites his considered study of art history and literature.

Fratino was born in Annapolis, Maryland. He received a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, in 2015. In 2014, Fratino was selected to participate in the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship at Yale Summer School of Art and Music, Norfolk, Connecticut, and, in 2016, he received a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Painting and Printmaking to study in Berlin.

Fratino has been the subject of numerous solo and two-person global exhibitions. His first solo presentation, REASONS: Works by Louis Fratino, was held at Platform Gallery, Baltimore, in 2016. Additional exhibitions of his work have been presented at Cabinet Printemps, Düsseldorf (2017); Ciaccia Levi, Paris (2018, 2019, 2021) and Milan (2022); Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York (2019, 2020, 2021, and 2023); Galerie Neu, Berlin (2022, 2025), and Litografia Bulla, Rome (2023), among others.

In 2024, the solo presentation Satura was held at Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, Italy. The exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated monograph printed by Mousse Publishing. Spotlight: Louis Fratino was presented at the FLAG Art Foundation, New York, in 2025. A two-person presentation placing Fratino’s work in dialogue with that of Henri Matisse was on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2026.

The artist’s work was presented in the Central Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere, in 2024. Fratino has also been included in group exhibitions at institutions worldwide, including FLAG Art Foundation, New York; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Musée Zadkine, Paris; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Rudolph Tegners Museum og Statuepark, Dronningmølle, Denmark; Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, The Netherlands; and Museum Brandhorst, Munich.

In 2026, David Zwirner announced the representation of Fratino’s work and presented his first solo exhibition with the gallery, Prose, at David Zwirner London.

Work by Fratino is held in numerous institutional collections, including Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; British Museum, London; Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), Paris; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The artist lives and works in New York.