Giovanni Frangi DU 2025–2026 – Monotypes, Paintings, and Prints
September 4, 2026 – October 10, 2026
Giovanni Frangi
Raphael Gallery
With *DU 2025–2026*, Giovanni Frangi now presents a comprehensive collection of his most recent works, which are being shown to the public for the first time.
The "Journey" series comprises a collection of aquatint etchings on zinc in which Frangi revisits central motifs from his visual universe: forests, water lilies, seascapes, leaves, and alpine huts such as those on Mount San Bernardino. Although all the prints were created using the aquatint technique, each one is subsequently individually retouched by hand with vibrant or matte color accents. The result is a series of unique, one-of-a-kind prints whose color palette and atmosphere make each sheet a work of art in its own right.
The second group of works, *Cantando sotto la pioggia*, brings together works on paper and paintings on canvas. Inspired by lush, exotic vegetation, these works were created using a unique technique that can be classified within the broad family of monotypes. In the early 2000s, Frangi spent an extended period working at the renowned Aurora Press printmaking studio in San Francisco, where he came to know and appreciate this technique, which is widely used in the American art world.
The starting point for the series is the Heliconia Paradise plant. As is so often the case in Frangi’s work, these pieces are also based on photographs the artist took himself during a stay on the Canary Island of Fuerteventura, where he lived and worked for an extended period. From these personal observations, Frangi develops a poetic visual language in which memory, the experience of nature, and painterly transformation merge into atmospherically dense compositions.
The exhibition title *DU* is intended as a tribute to the legendary Swiss cultural magazine *Du*, which gained international renown under the direction of Manuel Gasser and is still highly regarded today, particularly for its exceptional graphic design.
An artist’s book in the form of an exhibition catalog is also being published to coincide with the exhibition. It deliberately builds on *Sassisassi*, the first catalog published in 2008, and adopts its format and design language. Like its predecessor, this publication traces Giovanni Frangi’s creative universe through a seemingly free sequence of images and offers a personal insight into the thoughts, inspirations, and passions that underlie his multifaceted body of work.