Single Horizontal Odalisque Twist #4

Francis PiatekWW-1996-139465

1996·Green, umber, gray, and black acrylic ink, and acrylic medium over photocopy on paper·27.8 × 42.8 cm (11 × 16 7/8 in.)

<p>Piatek’s career was marked by early successes: he won the Francis Ryerson Foreign Travel Fellowship in 1967 and was included in the Whitney Biennial before he had finished his BFA. The artist’s work is often filled with twisting knots, rounded tubes, and interlacing forms that recall the shapes found in the Book of Kells, a medieval manuscript, and Aztec and Minoan art. Piatek earned BFA and MFA degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1996
Medium: Green, umber, gray, and black acrylic ink, and acrylic medium over photocopy on paper
Dimensions: 27.8 × 42.8 cm (11 × 16 7/8 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Francis Piatek

Artist

Francis Piatek

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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