Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, of Italian parents, Frasconi was raised in Montevideo, Uruguay, before moving to the United States in 1945. As a boy he studied art, attended art exhibitions, and was apprenticed to a printer. In the United States he studied at the Art Students League and the New School for Social Research in New York. He took to woodcut as his primary medium and quickly established a reputation as a leading woodcut artist, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952. He illustrated several books including The House That Jack Built (a runner-up for the Caldecott Medal) and several bilingual children's books. In the 1980s he produced a series of woodcuts that he called "Los Desaparecidos" (The Disappeared) in reference to the people killed during the military dictatorship of Uruguay.
