Antonio Frasconi was Born April 28, 1919, on a boat between Argentina and Uruguay, and raised in Montevideo, Uruguay. His parents were of Italian descent. He died at the age of 93 in Norwalk, Connecticut.  Married to Leona Peirce, he had two sons, Pablo Frasconi and Miguel Frasconi.  He apprenticed in the printing trade at an early age.  During the early 1940s he was exposed to Impressionism and post Impressionism by art exhibits brought to South America.  He was interested and influenced by North American literature and music, including the works of Walt Whitman and Jazz.

He moved to the United States in 1945 and his work received some recognition and was displayed at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, then the Brooklyn Museum of Art.  Also, in 1945, he was awarded a scholarship to the Art Student’s League of New York.  He also attended the new School for Social Research and later taught there.  He was named A Guggenheim Fellow in 1952 and was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1962.  Frasconi was named the Distinguished Teaching Professor of Visual Arts at the State University of New York at Purchase in 1982.

Amongst his most famous political works was a series of woodcuts named “Los desaparecidos” (The Disappeared), created from 1981 – 1986, that decried the torture and murder of citizens during the military dictatorship of Uruguay.

An internationally known woodcut artist, he has created hundreds of works on print and illustrated a number of books.  His subject matter ranged from nature, urbanism, portraits of culturally important figures, literature and political protest.

The Frasconi prints shown here from the Private Collection of Kaseowitz Gallery were first purchased mostly at small auctions in lower Manhattan in the 1950s by Edward Case, who was an intellectual, poet, book review columnist and small manufacturing business owner (a book of poems by Edward Case is being published by Kaseowitz Publishing - see the Books section of this website).  One print, the portrait of the poet Dylan Thomas, was bought directly from Antonio Frasconi by Case and was the first print or artist’s proof off the block.  Frasconi signed it but it bears no edition number.