Francis (Frank) Piatek [b. 1944: Chicago, Illinois]
oil on panel
13 by 22 inches
Collection of the Illinois State Museum
Frank Piatek creates intimate images of tubular forms rendered in chiaroscuro, the soft light of classical painting. The artist’s body of work, created over twenty years and continuing today, constantly challenges his viewer’s expectations of scale in paintings, drawings, and prints. One of Chicago’s “Allusive Abstractionists” (along with William Conger, Miyoko Ito, and Richard Loving) Piatek has stubbornly refused to deny himself visual references to real world issues such as form and illusion. He has never embraced pure abstraction.