Francesca DiMattio facts for kids
Francesca DiMattio (born in 1981) is an American artist from New York City. She creates amazing paintings and ceramic sculptures. Her art mixes ideas from buildings, designs, different cultures, and history.
About Francesca DiMattio
Francesca grew up in the Chelsea area of New York City. Her mom was a college counselor and also worked with ceramics. Her dad was a scientist at NYU Medical Center.
She went to public schools in New York City, including the Lab School and LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, graduating in 1999. She earned her first art degree (BFA) from Cooper Union in 2003. Then, she got her master's degree (MFA) from Columbia University of the Arts in 2005.
Today, Francesca lives and works in New York City and Hillsdale, New York.
Her Art and Career
Francesca DiMattio is known for her unique paintings and sculptures. She combines different patterns, textures, and images. She makes them fit together in a logical way, even if they seem very different at first.
Her large paintings on canvas have been shown in famous places like the Saatchi Gallery in London, Locust Projects in Miami, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
More recently (from 2014 to 2018), Francesca started making ceramic sculptures. These sculptures are often very large and show a mix of feminine strength and fun. She takes ideas from many places, like art history, children's books, cartoons, pop culture, and traditional crafts.
It might look like she uses ready-made pieces, but Francesca actually sculpts and glazes everything by hand. Her sculptures are complex. Each side shows new ways she has experimented with ceramics and glazes. She layers and breaks apart different styles and cultures in her work. This shows how art can be changed and re-imagined.
In her art, things don't always act as you expect. Small figures might look huge, flower designs can spread everywhere, and body parts can turn into plants or animals. Through her paintings and by mixing art with craft, she brings old ideas into the modern art world.
Some of her ceramic sculptures are huge candelabras (large candle holders). They have many historical details, showing how old ceramic styles influence modern lighting. Her "totems" are like modern versions of ancient Greek statues called Caryatids. These statues were often women holding up buildings. Francesca's totems make us think about the challenges women face today.
For example, her Caryatid sculptures combine different ideas. They mix masculine and feminine, playful and serious, modern and ancient, and high art with everyday culture. Francesca takes traditional feminine ideas and adds new parts to her sculptures. These figures are "freed" from their old job of holding up buildings. This can also be seen as freeing the female body from traditional ideas.
Francesca also creates paintings that use architecture (buildings) to change how we think about space. In her paintings Ladder and Broken Arch at the Saatchi Gallery, different elements crash into each other. They get tangled and exist together. This makes us think differently about how we see space. Her work seems to be a mix of abstract art (shapes and colors) and figurative art (things you can recognize).
In Boston, Francesca created a large artwork called Banquet for the ICA's art wall. It used five big canvases. She got ideas from the museum's building and its waterfront location. Banquet mixes inside and outside spaces and includes images of ships and the sea.
In 2015, Francesca designed a sculpture called Chandelobra. It changed the usual idea of a chandelier, which is often seen as feminine. She turned it into an unexpected, explosive, and unfamiliar object. Another sculpture, Bloemenhouder (2015), features hundreds of porcelain pieces decorated with flowers. The sculpture is covered in ornaments, and the flowers spread everywhere at the bottom. This shows how Francesca finds balance and beauty through breaking things apart and using abstract ideas.
Some people might find Francesca's art unusual. But her bold styles, glazes, and designs encourage people to think differently about traditional ideas of beauty.
Exhibitions
- 2005 – Paradise Lost, Marvelli Gallery, New York; First Look, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY
- 2006 – New Work, Salon 94, New York; The General's Jamboree- Guild & Greyshkul Gallery, New York
- 2007 – Abstract America, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; Unhinged, Laxart, Los Angeles, CA; True Faith, Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York; Killers and Their Hiding Places, World Class Boxing, Miami, FL
- 2008 – November Again, Harris Lieberman Gallery, NY
- 2009 – Futurescape, Contemporary Art Galleries, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT; Master of Reality, curated by Joseph Wardwell, The Herbert and Mildred Lee Gallery, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Salon 94, New York Salon 94 Freemans, New York, NY; Decollage, Locust Projects, Miami, FL
- 2010 – Francesca DiMattio, Sandra & Gerald Fineberg Art Wall, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Francesca DiMattio/Garth Weiser, The Suburban, Chicago, IL.; Portugal Arte 10, Lisbon, Portugal
- 2011 – Bouquet, Conduits Gallery, Milan, Italy; Extended Painting International, Prague Biennial, Prague, Czech Republic; 8 Americans, Alain Noirhomme Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; 4 Rooms, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
- 2012 – Francesca DiMattio, Table Setting and Flower Arranging, March 17 – April 21, 2012, Salon 94 Bowery, New York, NY; Modern Talking, Cluj Museum, Cluj, Romania; Four Rooms, CSW Zamek, Warsaw, Poland
- 2013 – Vertical Arrangements, Zabludowicz Collection, London, England
- 2014 – Francesca DiMattio: Housewares, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, TX
- 2015 – Confection, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, England; Domestic Sculpture, Salon 94 Bowery, New York, NY
- 2018 – Boucherouite, Salon 94 Bowery, New York, NY
