RUTH FRANCKEN Untitled, No. 254 (Burning Point Series).
Watercolor, gouache and charcoal on heavy white wove paper, 1987. 1000x700 mm; 39 1/2x27 3/4 inches. Dated and annotated "No. 254" in pencil, verso. With the "Salon Ruth Francken" estate ink stamp, verso.
Born in Prague and exiled in Vienna during the interwar years, Francken (1924-2006) studied painting with Arthur Segal from 1939-40 at the Ruskin School in Oxford, England, and lived in New York from 1940 to 1950 (she became an American citizen in 1942), taking classes at the Art Students League, before settling in Paris in 1952. Francken is generally considered an Abstract Expressionist artist, 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 developed in her 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.
