Sam Francis |
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Sam Francis (1923 -
1994)
Considered
one of the premier colorists of the twentieth century, Sam Francis is best
known for dramatic, lushly painted works comprised of vivid pools of color,
thinly applied. Drips, gestures, and splatters of paint in his work have
led many critics to identify him as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist,
but Francis has also been compared to Color Field artists on the basis of
large, fluid sections of paint that seem to extend beyond the confines of the
pictorial surface. In 1964, the influential art critic Clement Greenberg
included Francis in his celebrated exhibition "Post-Painterly
Abstraction" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In the
catalogue, Greenberg described Post-Painterly Abstraction as both being related
to and distinct from Abstract Expressionism. Greenberg wrote: “By
contrast with the interweaving of light and dark gradations in the typical
Abstract Expressionist picture, all the artists in this show move towards a
physical openness of design, or towards linear clarity, or towards both.”
Francis was born in San Mateo,
California, in 1923. He
originally studied medicine and psychology at the University
of California at Berkeley, before serving in the U.S. Air
Force. During a lengthy hospital confinement as a result of spinal
tuberculosis, Francis began painting. After his release, he continued to
study painting, first with David Park at the California School of Fine Arts in
San Francisco and then at U.C. Berkeley, where he majored in art and eventually
earned both a B.A. and an M.A. During the late 1940s, he began producing
and exhibiting his earliest abstract paintings. Francis was initially
influenced by the work of the Abstract Expressionists, and he incorporated many
of their techniques and ideas in his work. Despite this influence,
Francis’s art was also in close dialogue with modern and contemporary French
art. His references ranged from the Water Lilies of Claude Monet, which
inspired many of Francis’s idea about atmosphere and space, to Pierre Bonnard
and Henri Matisse, whose conceptions of pure color were particularly resonant.
Launching what would turn out to be a decade of travel abroad, Francis left California for Paris
in 1950, and studied briefly at the Académie Fernand Léger. While there,
he became friendly with the Canadian artist Jean-Paul Riopelle and several
American artists, including Joan Mitchell, as well as more established European
artists including Alberto Giacometti. Francis quickly began exhibiting
his work—he participated in the 1950 Salon de Mai in Paris
as well as several group shows, including the critic Michel Tapié’s celebrated
1951 exhibition, "Un Art Autre", which was shown in both Paris and London.
By 1952, Francis was showing his work in several solo exhibitions and
high-profile group exhibitions, such as “12 Americans” at the Museum of Modern Art
(1956) and “New American Painting” (1958), both of which were curated by
Dorothy Miller, and 1959 exhibitions Documenta II and the Bienal de São Paulo.
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