Franne Davids and the World She Painted

About this event

Franne Davids (1950–2022) was a painter. Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1950, she spent much of her adult life navigating schizophrenia by painting in the basement of the home she lived in with her parents. There, she created more than 400 paintings, mostly of feminine figures. These "girls," as she often called them in her titles, were her friends, imaginary people with whom she shared her otherwise-reclusive world.

As a young adult, Davids attended Skidmore College for a year, and later took classes in New York City and elsewhere, studying art and writing, but never graduated and was primarily self-taught. Franne Davids and the World She Painted will be the artist's first museum solo exhibition—something she both sought and prevented in her lifetime. Though she contacted, on at least a few occasions, museum curators to try to get their attention, and participated in at least one juried exhibition at the Mattatuck Museum in the early 1990s, she rarely allowed anyone to see her work, keeping racks of paintings hidden in the basement. This commitment to art was made possible due to the devotion of her parents, and later her younger brother, who ensured that as she lived with mental illness, she stayed safe and fed, with canvases, paper, and tubes of store-bought paint on hand.

Franne Davids and the World She Painted is organized by Chief Curator Rebecca McNamara.

Opening Celebration: October 11, 1-4 PM $5 Admission Remarks at 1:30 PM

Support provided by Post University

Image Credit: Franne Davids, Untitled, c. 1979–2018, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches, © Estate of Franne Davids, courtesy Ricco/Maresca