'Louis Fratino' by Jo Smail
2026
Fratino adapts the visual languages of European and American modernism to contemplate the beauty and queerness of everyday gestures and experiences in nature, in the home, and in one’s own self-conception. I taught Louis in his second year as a painting student at MICA. He was struggling a bit to find his own voice. Then, suddenly—or so it seemed to me—he began to paint autobiographical subjects: his family and his love life surrounded by the objects he cared about. I remember, as if it were yesterday, a painting he made for his final critique in his third year. The painting was truly astounding. We were crowded, along with visiting critic Derrick Adams, into a small studio. The painting moved us to silence.
Brilliantly curated by Virginia Anderson and Katy Rothkopf, Fratino and Matisse: To See This Light Again features a selection of Fratino’s paintings, drawings, prints, and sketchbooks in conversation with works by Matisse from the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Read more at BOMB Magazine.
