Black Septagon

This drawing by Dennis Kowalski, a Chicago native and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumnus, alludes to floor pieces composed of eccentric geometric shapes—here a septagon, or seven-sided form—that he made in the late 1970s using aluminum and cement. In 1993 Chicago Tribune art critic Alan Artner called Kowalksi “one of the few real maverick artists in the city, one who occasionally has prefigured here kinds of work that eventually caught on in more open art centers.” Kowalski enjoyed a long career as a professor of sculpture at the University of Illinois at Chicago.