American artist Christopher Ciccone, the brother of superstar Madonna, died from cancer on Friday, according to his family. He was 63.
Ciccone’s family released a statement about his death on Sunday. They said Ciccone “died peacefully” while surrounded by his husband and loved ones. Also on Sunday, Madonna penned a touching tribute to her brother on Instagram, where she noted she and Ciccone always shared a special connection despite their sometimes-tumultuous relationship.
“My brother Christopher is gone,” Madonna, 66, wrote. “He was the closest human to me for so long.”
The singer said it is difficult to explain her connection to her younger brother, but that “it grew out of an understanding that we were different and society was going to give us a hard time for not following the status quo.”
“We took each other‘s hands and we danced through the madness of our childhood,” she recalled.
The Like a Virgin singer shared several photos of she and Ciccone over the years, as well as some of his artwork.
Madonna said dance was the “superglue” that held together her relationship with Ciccone.
In his life, Ciccone was a painter, a writer and the art director for Madonna’s early-career Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990. Ciccone was also a backup dancer, stylist and creative consultant for his older sister. Madonna called him a “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 it saved him too,” Madonna wrote of their childhood.
She said ballet class was a “safe space” for a young Ciccone to be gay — “a word that was not spoken or even whispered where we lived.”
Madonna and Ciccone together moved from their home in Rochester, Mich. to New York City, she said. There, the siblings “devoured” art, music and film, and “danced through the madness of the AIDS epidemic.”
Recalling their collaborations throughout her career, Madonna said she and her brother “defied the Roman Catholic Church, The Police, the Moral Majority and all Authority figures that got in the way of Artistic freedom!”
“The last few years have not been easy,” she continued. “We did not speak for sometime [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 his book, Life with My Sister Madonna. The tell-all autobiography, the release of which was opposed by Madonna, detailed their childhood, their working relationship and included unreleased family photographs.
“I did my best to keep him alive as long as possible. He was in so much pain towards the end,” she wrote. “Once again, we held hands We closed our eyes and we danced.”
Madonna said she is grateful Ciccone is no longer suffering.
“There will never be anyone like him. I know he’s dancing somewhere,” she concluded.
In a statement from his family to ABC News, Ciccone’s loved ones said he, like his siblings, “came of age in Rochester, Michigan, where both his personal and creative identities bloomed to reveal an expansively artistic soul.”
“Christopher moved to New York City where he applied his craft of dancer and choreographer in support of his sister Madonna’s emerging singing career,” the statement reads.
Ciccone is remembered by his family as “an interior specialist; a designer of footwear; a memoirist — all the while dedicating himself to painting as his primary mode of personal expression.”
Ciccone married his husband, Ray Thacker, in 2016. He is survived by Thacker, several siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends.
Ciccone died only weeks after his and Madonna’s stepmother, Joan Ciccone, died following a diagnosis of “very aggressive cancer.”
Madonna’s older brother, Anthony Ciccone, died in February 2023 at 66 years old.
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