Louis Fratino, a painter from Baltimore who turned 30 last year, was already a global phenomenon before his debut at the Venice Biennale in April drew even more attention to his wide-ranging body of work.
His works are immediately compelling, drawing you into a self-contained universe that is rich with art-historical references. His subjects include quiet but emotionally resonant interior scenes and nude men embracing one another or engaging in sexual acts in scenes that feel tender and intimate.
Juan Manuel Silverio, a contributing writer for the biennale, writes that Fratino’s latest works “explore the ways in which LGBTQ+ people are socialized to navigate the world as an ‘outsider,’” and that he “juxtaposes the image of the family in contrast with visceral homoerotic imagery as a way to visually complicate the tensions between the two.”
Louis Fratino, An Argument (2021). Image courtesy Sotheby’s.
Fratino’s presence in Italy grows even larger today, with the opening of a major solo show at the Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, “Louis Fratino. Satura,” which will include 12 new paintings, several sculptures, over 20 drawings and lithographs, and 30 earlier paintings. Mousse Press is publishing a book in conjunction with it that focuses on Fratino’s connection to Italy, where he has spent considerable time.
Meanwhile, Magic Hour Press, which is run by Jordan Weitzman, has just published a stunning monograph with beautiful color reproductions of a range of Fratino’s paintings, an essay by the Baltimore Museum of Art’s American art curator, Virginia G.M. Anderson, and a conversation between the artist and the veteran painter Carroll Dunham.
Louis Fratino, My meal (2019). Image courtesy the artist and Magic Hour Press.
The book has an eye-catching, collage-like image on its cover, a format inspired by the mid-20th-century periodical Verve from the French publisher Teriade. “It was a series of publications, each one dedicated to artists like Matisse, Picasso, and Miró,” Weitzman said. “Because Louis’s work references those artists so much we thought that would be a fitting reference. Printed in a run of 2,000, it has already sold out.
Below, a deeper look at the current market for Fratino.
Source: Artnet Price Database. Image courtesy Artnet Worldwide Corporation.
The Context
Performance in 2023
– Lots sold: 41
– Bought in: 1
– Sell-through rate: 97.6 percent
– Total sales: $3.1 million
Overall Performance
Auction record: $730,800, for An Argument (2021), which sold at Sotheby’s New York on November 16, 2022, against an estimate of $200,000 to $300,000.
Top painting price: Also $730,800, for An Argument (2021) in that November 2022 sale.
Lowest painting price: Morning Glory, (2017), an oil and pencil on canvas that sold for $42,851 (£35,300) at a Phillips London day sale in June 2022
Lowest overall price: $3,543 for Untitled (2018), an oil on card box sold at Christie’s First Open online sale on March 12, 2024.
Expert View: While primary market prices for Fratino’s paintings are typically in the low six-figures, his auction highs indicate just how strong demand is for his creations. At least five works have recently sold for over $500,000 each. (Works in other mediums can, of course, go for less: Artnet recently viewed an image of an ink on watercolor from 2018 that was offered privately by a dealer for $25,000.)
“In the past several gallery previews I have received with Louis Fratino’s paintings in them, the artworks are either already marked as sold or are listed with the qualifier ‘price upon application,’ both of which indicate high demand,” art advisor Liz Parks said in an email.
Louis Fratino, Covetousness (2019). Image courtesy Sotheby’s.
Lucius Elliot, vice president and head of contemporary marquee auctions for Sotheby’s in New York, said that Fratino “falls within that group of Brooklyn artists using figuration as a way of navigating identity politics,” and named Salman Toor, Julien Nguyen, and Doron Langberg as key contemporaries.
“Each work is a carefully observed world in miniature, though the mode of observation isn’t precious,” Anderson writes in her essay.
Experts said that while Fratino’s more sexually explicit paintings may have a more limited audience, demand for them is nonetheless intense. The Argument (2021), which holds his auction record, features nude men lying on opposite sides of a dividing wall in the wake of a heated fight. It was estimated at $200,000 to $300,000, but sold for $730,800.
The second-highest price on record is the $504,000 achieved for The Flower Market (2022), which sold at Christie’s this past May, trouncing its $200,000 high estimate.
Elliot said that galleries that show Fratino have long waiting lists for his work. In New York, that’s Sikkema Jenkins Gallery. (The gallery did not respond to questions about the artist’s market.)
The artist “doesn’t let [paintings] out of his studio with any great velocity,” Elliot said, adding that demand for Fratino’s work is “global,” with collectors coming from Asia, Europe, and the U.S. “They are largely younger collectors, at least in my experience,” he said.
The Appraisal: Fratino stands out for his unique vision and extraordinary skill; his beautiful, quiet interiors avoid feeling sentimental, just as his sexually frank scenes never feel explicit or confrontational. Demand for his work is vigorous across a wide range of subject matter, and given the scarcity of available material, buyers can expect those high-six-figure prices for his paintings to keep ticking upward.