Press Release

Browne Art Opens in St. Petersburg’s Museum District with Inaugural Exhibition Emancipation by Francesco Agresti
March 12 – May 9, 2026

Gallery location: 3rd floor of Station House
260 1st Ave S, Ste 200-197, 3rd Fl, St Petersburg, FL 33701

“Emancipation is not achieved by turning away from intensity, but by passing fully through it.”
– Jovian Browne

Browne Art is pleased to present Emancipation, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Italian-born, New York–trained artist Francesco Agresti. Emancipation presents Agresti at the height of this artistic evolution. Since relocating to Florida in 2003, meditations on coastal light, sea grasses, and open horizons have shaped his mature style.

The exhibition, which will run from March 12 to May 9, 2026, marks the opening of Browne Art Gallery in St. Petersburg’s Museum District. The gallery, led by New York curator and gallerist Jovian Browne, presents a focused contemporary program featuring national and international artists–practitioners across painting, sculpture, performance, film and literary arts–whose works demonstrate formal rigor, conceptual depth, and singular voices within contemporary discourse.

Emancipation represents a pivotal moment in Agresti’s artistic evolution. Known in his early career for rigorous geometric abstraction associated with the Post-ABEX movement, Agresti’s work today reflects a profound transformation. After decades of disciplined studio practice shaped by New York minimalism and later refined through sustained meditations on Florida’s coastal light and atmosphere, this new body of work is looser, more spacious, and deeply lyrical.

Agresti’s expressive abstractions ask to be deeply felt and their intensity integrated on a soul level. Surfaces pulse with layered material—acrylic, gouache, marble dust, wax, veneer tape, linseed oil, and ink—forming fields that oscillate between containment and release. The works unfold like symphonic movements, where density and dissolution coexist. In key paintings such as Fontainebleau (2026), space opens gradually—air rising toward the upper canvas, passages of white emerging like doors left ajar. Agresti guides the viewer through a quiet but powerful arc of emancipation: from confinement, into the crucible, and towards freedom.

About the Artist
Born in Itri, Italy in 1949, Francesco Agresti immigrated to the Bronx in 1956 and later earned his BFA and MFA from Hunter/Lehman College. Emerging in the early 1980s New York art scene alongside artists such as David Reed and Sean Scully, he initially worked within a restrained geometric vocabulary. After returning to Italy in the late 1980s during a period of personal crisis, his work shifted toward greater lyricism and narrative presence. His work reflects sustained investigations into light, atmosphere, material process, and emotional resonance. With national and international exhibitions, Agresti is part of distinguished collections, including Kathryn Markel of Markel Fine Art, and has been written about by discerning curators and critics, including Art In America writer Eleanor Hartney. Agresti currently lives and works between Venice, Florida and Scituate, Massachusetts.

Link to Press Release
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10YQnhWEMrLUrOI4Of0EXluqKRo6VBhujhXvP7JqW7Uo/edit?tab=t.0

Link to Exhibition Page with Essay, Images and Event RSVP
https://www.browneart.co/exhibitions/francesco-agresti/emancipation