Frank Piatek

Frank Piatek (born 1944) is 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 society of Chicago artists exploring various types of organic abstraction that shared qualities in imitation of 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 progress and refinement of abstract painting in Chicago" with on purpose rendered, biomorphic compositions that illustrate the dialectical relationship between Chicago's idiosyncratic abstract and figurative styles. Piatek's undertaking has been exhibited at institutions including the Whitney Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, MCA Chicago, National Museum, Szczecin in Poland, and Terra Museum of American Art; it belongs to the public art collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and MCA Chicago, among others. Curator Lynne Warren describes Piatek as "the quintessential Chicago artist—a deeply individualistic, introspective outsider" who has developed a "unique and intensely felt world view from an artistically solitary vantage point." Piatek lives and works in Chicago next his wife, painter and SAIC professor Judith Geichman, and has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before 1974.