Oil on canvas, dated and annotated "No. 30" in ink on the stretcher verso, with the "Salon Ruth Francken" estate ink stamp, on the stretcher, 32 1/2 x 48 in.
Born in Prague and exiled in Vienna during the interwar years, Francken studied painting with Arthur Segal beginning in 1939 at the Ruskin School in Oxford, England, and lived in New York from 1940 to 1950. She became an American citizen in 1942, and took classes at the Art Students League before settling in Paris in 1952. Francken is generally considered an Abstract Expressionist, though her later work also focused on sculpture, collage of different textiles with related techniques and furniture design. Her work from the late 1960s to the early 1970s is marked by an obsession with technology, as in this series of photo-metallic reliefs and collages. While sometimes included among the Pop artists for these 1960s/1970s works, the over-arching interest of much of her creative output is the association of industrial language and its conflictual relationship with fine art.
