Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Antonio Frasconi

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By Karl Cole, posted on Apr 28, 2025

Antonio Frasconi is an internationally known woodcut artist. He has published hundreds of prints and illustrated many books. Although much of his work has registered political protest, his subjects range from urban scenes to literature to landscapes.

Artist birthday for 28 April: Antonio Frasconi (1919–2013, United States, born Argentina)

Antonio Frasconi was an artist who consistently documented the of the immigrant working class and other American labor groups.

 

Woodcut print by Antonio Frasconi titled Montrey Fisherman (1951).
Antonio Frasconi, Monterey Fisherman, 1951. Color woodcut on paper, left panel of a diptych, 53.3 x 44.5 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art. © 2025 Antonio Frasconi / licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (PMA-8972frvg)

 

No labor-intensive type of harvesting or hunting activity escaped Frasconi's documentation. By the 1950s, he was considered the premier American artist in the woodcut medium. As he did in many of his prints, in Monterey Fisherman Frasconi printed an un-carved block before printing the subject to give the background the texture of the wood. This added depth to his forms, and also, for this subject, hinted at the miserable weather often faced by fisherfolk.

Frasconi was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina but moved to Montevideo, Uruguay as a child. He attended architecture school and the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Montevideo. His bent towards realism was further strengthened through jobs as a political cartoonist and graphic illustrator for books. The work as a political cartoonist who criticized abuses of power in government fostered his interest in connecting his art to the life of the hard-working everyday-people very much as the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Peoples Printmaking Studio) did in Mexico City.

In 1945, Frasconi studied art at the Art Students League in New York at a time when the Abstract Expressionists were getting their start. He learned of European modernism while in New York and was influenced by Cubism. However, the only effect abstraction had on his work was to simplify surfaces by organizing compositions into contrasting shapes. This aspect also heightened the impact of his subjects in their stark contrasts on large shapes and some minimal pattern.

Deciding to remain in the United States in 1946, Frasconi moved to Santa Barbara, California. He became interested in the plight of migrant Mexican farm workers. Between 1948 and 1953 he issued a series of images documenting their backbreaking work. When the United Farm Workers were organized in the 1960s, Frasconi designed their logo. He has also done illustrations and covers for dozens of books, including many children's books.