Clouds and Mountains
<p>Frank Piatek took a break between receiving his bachelor’s degree from SAIC in 1967 and his master’s degree four years later. Bitten by the etching bug—largely as a result of viewing an Art Institute exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s late prints—he enrolled in an etching class with Vera Berdich and made this work. <em>Clouds and Mountains</em> and other prints like it relate to a large series of drawings conflating images of clouds and mountains that Piatek made using a Bic ballpoint pen. The density of his etched lines is directly linked to the strong impression that Picasso’s prints made on him.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1969
- Dimensions
- Image/plate: 27.8 × 35 cm (11 × 13 13/16 in.); Sheet: 30.4 × 39.8 cm (12 × 15 11/16 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Francis Piatek
Artist
Painting
Frank Piatek was an American artist, known for abstract, illusionistic paintings of tubular forms and three-dimensional works exploring spirituality, cultural memory and the creative process. Piatek emerged in the mid-1960s, among a group of Chicago artists exploring various types of organic abstraction that shared qualities with the Chicago Imagists; his work, however relies more on suggestion than expressionistic representation. In Art in Chicago 1945-1995, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (MCA) described Piatek as playing “a crucial role in the development and refinement of abstract painting in Chicago" with carefully rendered, biomorphic compositions that illustrate the dialectical relationship between Chicago's idiosyncratic abstract and figurative styles.
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More by Francis Piatek
Single Horizontal Odalisque Twist #4
1996 · Green, umber, gray, and black acrylic ink, and acrylic medium over photocopy on paper
Red Light
1987 · Oil on canvas
Notebook Page, from Screen Prints 1970
1970 · Screenprint on off-white wove paper
Trees
1969 · Etching in black on ivory wove paper
Sock It To Me Baby Tube Etching No. 3
1967 · Color etching on ivory wove paper
Sock It To Me Baby Tube Etching No. 3
1967 · Color etching on ivory wove paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Francis Piatek
- Year
- 1969
- Dimensions
- Image/plate: 27.8 × 35 cm (11 × 13 13/16 in.); Sheet: 30.4 × 39.8 cm (12 × 15 11/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1969-139460
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified