American artist Christopher Ciccone, brother of superstar Madonna, died of cancer on Friday, according to his family. He was 63 years old.
Ciccone’s family released a statement about his death on Sunday. They said Ciccone”died peacefully” while surrounded by her husband and loved ones. Also on Sunday, Madonna wrote a touching tribute to her brother on Instagram, noting that she and Ciccone always shared a special connection despite their sometimes tumultuous relationship.
“My brother Christopher is gone,” wrote Madonna, 66. “He was the closest human being to me for a long time.”
The singer said it’s difficult to explain her connection with her younger brother, but that it “came from the realization that we were different and that society was going to give us a hard time for not following the status quo.”
“We held hands and danced through the craziness of our childhood,” she recalled.
He like a virgin The singer shared several photos of her and Ciccone over the years, as well as some of their artwork.
Madonna said dancing was the “super glue” that held her relationship with Ciccone together.
In his life, Ciccone was a painter, writer, and art director for Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990. Ciccone was also a backup dancer, stylist, and creative consultant to his older sister. Madonna called him “a painter, a poet and a visionary.”
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“Discovering dance in our small Midwestern town saved me and then my brother came along and that saved him too,” Madonna wrote of her childhood.
He said ballet class was a “safe space” for a young Ciccone to be gay: “a word that wasn’t said or even whispered where we lived.”
Madonna and Ciccone moved together from their home in Rochester, Michigan, to New York City, he said. There, the brothers “devoured” art, music and movies, and “danced through the madness of the AIDS epidemic.”
Madonna and her brother Christopher Ciccone at the Jean Paul Gaultier gallery in July 1990 in Paris, France.
ARNAL/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Recalling their collaborations throughout her career, Madonna said she and her brother “challenged the Roman Catholic Church, the police, the moral majority and all authority figures who stood in the way of artistic freedom.”
“The last few years have not been easy,” he continued. “We didn’t talk for a while. [sic] but when my brother got sick. “We found our way back to each other.”
The relationship between Madonna and Ciccone reportedly fractured in 2008 amid the release of her book, Life with my sister Madonna. The revealing autobiography, whose publication Madonna opposed, details her childhood, her working relationship and includes previously unpublished family photographs.
“I did everything I could to keep him alive as long as possible. He suffered a lot towards the end,” he wrote. “Once again, we hold hands, close our eyes and dance.”
Madonna said she is grateful Ciccone is no longer suffering.
“There will never be anyone like him. “I know he is dancing somewhere,” he concluded.
Christopher Ciccone attends the Nico Didonna and Ciccone Collection show during London Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2013, at The Strand Gallery on September 14, 2012 in London, England.
Mike Marsland/WireImage
In a statement from his family to ABC News, Ciccone’s loved ones said that he, like his siblings, “came of age in Rochester, Michigan, where both his personal and creative identities flourished to reveal a tremendous soul.” artistic”.
“Christopher moved to New York City, where he applied his craft as a dancer and choreographer in support of his sister Madonna’s emerging singing career,” the statement read.
Ciccone is remembered by his family as “an interior specialist; shoe designer; a memoirist, while at the same time dedicating himself to painting as his main mode of personal expression.”
Ciccone married her husband, Ray Thacker, in 2016. She is survived by Thacker, several siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends.
Ciccone died just weeks after he and Madonna’s stepmother, Joan CicconeHe died after a diagnosis of “very aggressive cancer.”
Madonna’s older brother, Anthony Ciccone, died in February 2023 at age 66.
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