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 group of Chicago artists exploring various types of organic elimination that shared qualities in the same way as the Chicago Imagists; his work, however relies more upon 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 encroachment and refinement of abstract painting in Chicago" with with intent rendered, biomorphic compositions that illustrate the dialectical attachment between Chicago's idiosyncratic abstract and figurative styles. Piatek's law 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 terribly individualistic, introspective outsider" who has developed a "unique and extremely felt world view from an artistically by yourself vantage point." Piatek lives and works in Chicago following his wife, painter and SAIC professor Judith Geichman, and has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 1974.