Francisco ("Paco") Sainz

Francisco Sainz, an artist and member of the Abstract Expressionist circle in New York City and East Hampton, N.Y., died on Oct. 20 in East Hampton. He was 75.

He had a heart attack while taking his morning walk, his family said.

Born in 1923 in Santander, Spain, Mr. Sainz, who was called Paco, fought as a teen-ager in the Spanish Civil War and was briefly imprisoned.

He arrived in New York just after World War II, having become interested in painting while living under an assumed name in Barcelona and working as an apprentice to a fashionable academic painter.

In New York, Mr. Sainz became friendly with many members of the New York School of painters, including Willem de Kooning, Lester Johnson and Alfred Leslie.

His style, developed during the 1950's, centered on figures, often in Spanish dress, isolated against colorful landscapes. These images, which had something in common with painters as dissimilar as Alex Katz and William Copley, were rendered in a blunt, somewhat stiff manner and were reminiscent both of 19th-century photography and folk painting.

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/09/arts/francisco-sainz-75-painter-in-abstract-expressionist-mode.html