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Sam FrancisUntitled (Black and White Composition) - Abstract Acrylic Painting, 19881988
1988
$30,000
£22,844.98
€26,087.51
CA$42,153.70
A$46,250.65
CHF 24,362.62
MX$550,200.21
NOK 312,082.21
SEK 284,973.67
DKK 194,898.81
About the Item
A painting by Sam Francis. "Untitled (Black and White Composition)" is an abstract expressionism painting, acrylic on paper executed in black and white by American Post-War artist Sam Francis. The work is signed verso, "Sam Francis 1988".
Provenance:
Private Collection, California
Heather James Fine Art, California
Private Collection, California
Sam Francis (1923-1994) was born in San Mateo, California, and studied botany, medicine and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He served in the United States Air Force during World War II before being injured in a plane crash. He was in the hospital for several years with spinal tuberculosis, and it was while there that he began to paint. Once out of the hospital he returned to Berkeley, this time to study art.
Francis was initially influenced by the work of Abstract Expressionists such as Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky and Clyfford Still. He spent the 1950s in Paris, having his first exhibition there in 1952. While there he became associated with Tachisme. He later spent time in Japan, and some have seen an influence from Zen Buddhism in his work. Francis spent some time in Paris executing entirely monochromatic works, but his mature pieces are generally large oil paintings with splashed or splattered areas of bright contrasting color. Areas of white canvas are often left to show through, and in later works, paint is sometimes confined to the edges of the canvas.
Luminous and painterly, rather than gestural, his "signature" paintings of the early 1950s are overlays of serial but asymmetrical biomorphic forms saturated with color. The mid 50s saw Francis include fields of various sized clusters of cell-like shapes usually in blue, yellow, and red on a white ground. Francis returned to California during the 1960s and continued painting in Los Angeles. During the final three decades of his career his style of large scale bright Abstract Expressionism was also closely associated with Color Field painting.
- Creator:Sam Francis (1923–1994, American)
- Creation Year:1988
- Dimensions:Height: 23.75 in (60.33 cm)Width: 17.75 in (45.09 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Palm Desert, CA
- Reference Number:Seller: 5116.c1stDibs: LU937050172
Sam Francis
Sam Francis was an American artist known for his exuberantly colorful, large-scale abstract paintings. His practice incorporated elements from Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, Impressionism and Eastern philosophy to create a unique style of painterly abstraction.
Influenced by Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still, Francis is more closely associated to the work of Helen Frankenthaler, as he was more interested in the formal arrangement of the picture plane than the expressivity of the individual artist. “Painting is about the beauty of space and the power of containment,” Francis once reflected.
Born on June 25, 1923 in San Mateo, California, Francis briefly served in the US Air Force during World War II but was injured during a test flight. Returning to California, he received his BA and MA from UC Berkeley in botany and psychology before beginning to pursue a career in art. The artist traveled widely during his career, and he was closely aligned with the Art Informel movement while living abroad in Paris during the 1950s.
Francis died on November 4, 1994 in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 71. He was a founding trustee of Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and his paintings can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among others.
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