CARVING WORDS: Woodcuts by Antonio Frasconi

April–June 2023, Second and Fourth Saturdays of Each Month, 11am–5pm, at Flow Chart Space, 348 Warren Street, Hudson, NY

The Flow Chart Foundation announces its first formal exhibit in our Flow Chart Space (348 Warren Street), to showcase woodcut prints by Uruguayan-American artist Antonio Frasconi (1919–2013) featuring poetry and other texts. The exhibition will be open to the public on the second and fourth Saturdays of April, May, and June, from 11am–5pm. The exhibit may also be viewed by appointment.

Frasconi lived in three languages—Spanish, Italian, and English—and had a lifelong love of literature. Much of his woodcut artistry illuminates the work of favorite poets and writers, including Lorca, Whitman, Poe, Thoreau, Hughes, Machado, Mario Benedetti (a childhood friend), and many others. Much of the exhibition features work demonstrating Frasconi’s strong anti-fascist literary leanings.

Hand carving each individual letter of text, as a master of color and composition, Frasconi’s way of working with wood and text is nothing short of astounding. In a 1963 interview he said, “Sometimes the wood gives you a break and matches your conception of the way it is grained. But often you must surrender to the grain, find the movement of the scene, the mood of the work, in the way the grain runs.” Frasconi also produced a number of books for children featuring woodcuts with texts in French, Italian, Spanish, and English.

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay of Italian immigrant parents, Frasconi moved to the US on a scholarship in 1945. At the end of World War II, his talent was already recognized, and he went on to become the artist that Time magazine called “America’s foremost practitioner of the ancient art of the woodcut.” His work represented Uruguay for the 1968 Venice Biennale, and is included in national and international collections including the National Museum of Visual Arts Uruguay; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the New York Public Library; the National Gallery of Art; the Smithsonian; and the National Portrait Gallery, as well as many other institutions.