I've got a stumper question, and I need some help in answering it. A patron
is looking for information about an artist named S. Francis Giza. One of
her relatives owns a painting signed with this name. The style was
described to me as "a little like Edward Hopper." The scene in the painting
depicts an artist's studio with a nude model and several other figures. The
model's hairstyle is "1920s-30s."
I've checked ULAN, the 1956 volume of Who's Who in American Art (the
earliest volume we own), and the 1999 edition of Who Was Who in American
Art. I checked variant spellings of the name (Gizeh, Geeza, Ghiza, etc.).
My searches turned up nothing. A Google internet search turned up a South
African soccer player named Francis Giza -- interesting, but not the artist
my patron is looking for. I had thought at first that the painting might be
an early work by Sam Francis, but his brief figurative phase took place in
the 1940s and was exclusively Surrealist.
The patron's relative acquired the painting in Chicago, so Giza may have
been active in that part of the country. I am crossing my fingers that an
institution in the Chicago area will uncover some helpful information in its
artists' files or vertical files.
Many thanks in advance,
Martha Smith
Art & Humanities Librarian
Purchase College, State University of New York
735 Anderson Hill Road
Purchase, NY 10577-1400
(914) 251-6416
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