Ricco/Maresca Gallery is proud to present Franne Davids: A Theater of Faces, the second gallery exhibition devoted to the late Connecticut painter (1950–2022). Following her revelatory debut in 2024, this new presentation focuses entirely on her portraits—many of them self-portraits—painted in oil on paper with an intensity that borders on incantation.
Davids spent her life working in near-total isolation, transforming her basement studio into a private stage where imagination and memory intertwined. In these small, electric images, faces emerge from fields of dense pattern and luminous color: yellow skin, red garments, black eyes that look both inward and beyond. Each figure feels inhabited—an apparition, a stand-in, a fragment of the artist herself.
What Davids achieved, without audience or instruction, is a deeply personal form of expressionism that fuses restraint and excess, tenderness and strangeness. Her theater of faces is less about likeness than presence—each painting a vivid record of looking and being looked at. Seen together, they reveal an artist who, in solitude, built an extraordinary visual language of empathy, defiance, and wonder.
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All:
Untitled, 1979-2018Oil on paper -
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12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm)(FD 150S)$ 8,000 -
11 x 8 1/2 in. (27.9 x 21.6 cm)(FD 148S)$ 8,000
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17 x 13 1/2 in. (43.2 x 34.3 cm)(FD 310S)$ 10,000
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12 x 9 1/4 in. (30.5 x 23.5 cm)(FD 152S)$ 8,000
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14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)(FD 430)RESERVED
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14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)(FD 436)SOLD
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14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)(FD 443)$ 9,000
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14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)(FD 434)$ 9,000
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14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)(FD 296S)$ 9,000
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14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)(FD 447)$ 9,000
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11 x 8 1/2 in. (27.9 x 21.6 cm)(FD 147S)$ 8,000
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17 x 13 1/2 in. (43.2 x 34.3 cm)(FD 308S)$ 10,000
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16 1/2 x 11 3/4 in. (41.9 x 29.8 cm)(FD 460)SOLD
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17 x 13 1/2 in. (43.2 x 34.3 cm)(FD 482)RESERVED
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17 x 13 1/2 in. (43.2 x 34.3 cm)(FD 474)$ 10,000
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17 x 13 1/2 in. (43.2 x 34.3 cm)(FD 481)$ 10,000
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17 x 13 1/2 in. (43.2 x 34.3 cm)(FD 479)RESERVED
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17 x 13 1/2 in. (43.2 x 34.3 cm)(FD 485)RESERVED
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10 x 7 3/4 in. (25.4 x 19.7 cm)(FD 496)$ 8,000
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10 x 7 3/4 in. (25.4 x 19.7 cm)(FD 497)$ 8,000
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11 x 8 1/4 in. (27.9 x 21 cm)(FD 500)$ 8,000
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11 3/4 x 9 in. (29.8 x 22.9 cm)(FD 512)$ 8,000
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11 3/4 x 9 in. (29.8 x 22.9 cm)(FD 514)SOLD
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14 1/4 x 11 in. (36.2 x 27.9 cm)(FD 556)RESERVED
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12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm)(FD 521)$ 8,000
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11 3/4 x 9 in. (29.8 x 22.9 cm)(FD 516)$ 8,000
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12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm)(FD 533)$ 8,000
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12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm)(FD 529)RESERVED
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Concurrently on view in Gallery Two:
James Castle: The Architecture of Silence
Visit the online viewing room here.
