Piatek’s career was marked by early successes: he won the Francis Ryerson Foreign Travel Fellowship in 1967 and was included in the Whitney Biennial before he had finished his BFA. The artist’s work is often filled with twisting knots, rounded tubes, and interlacing forms that recall the shapes found in the Book of Kells, a medieval manuscript, and Aztec and Minoan art. Piatek earned BFA and MFA degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.