Seymour Franks

Seymour Franks

Seymour Franks (1916-1981) was born in New York City in 1916.  At the age of 16 Franks was stricken with polio.  He went on to work for the WPA and later studied at the National Academy of Design in 1937.  Franks continued to work throughout his life as an artist and designer, showing at prestigious venues including the Whitney, and the Peridot Gallery in New York.  A 1986 show of WPA works in LA fostered art critic and writer Kristine McKenna to write this about Seymour Franks : “Stricken with polio at 16, Franks spent much of his young life in hospitals and was strongly influenced by Picasso’s Blue and Rose periods. Franks’ broodingly romantic paintings convey the impression of a loner who remained isolated even as those around him pulled together to survive the Depression. Evocative of the thorn and thistled terrain of Sleeping Beauty, Franks’ “Stormy Landscape” suggests that there will always remain intangible needs that can’t be met with $23.60 per month.”   ($23.60 refers to the wage an artist of the WPA might garner weekly).

Franks, exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in1 944, 1954; The Whitney Museum of American Art from 1946-48, 1950, 1952; the Brooklyn Museum, 1949, 1951; the Art Institute of Chicago in 1947; the Peridot Gallery, 1948, 1950-55; the University of Nebraska, 1951; and at the University of Illinois in 1952.

This work was created with a mix of pigments, including oil paint, on paper laid on board. Housed in the original frame.  It retains two Peridot Gallery stamps verso.

Measures 35″ x 25.5″ sight size, and 38.5″ x 28.5″ x 2″ overall including framing.

Dated 1947

Price on request