Untitled. 1970.
Acrylic and watercolour.
Signed, dated and barely legibly inscribed on the reverse, with the estate stamp, there with number "SF 70-424", as well as with inscription. On laid paper. 57,2 : 78,7 cm (22,5 : 30,9 in), the full sheet. Sam Francis studied painting under Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still before going to Paris, where he stayed from 1948 until 1950, attending the Académie Léger. In 1952 he had his first one-man-show in Paris and met exponents of French Informel. Accepted as a member of the young European avant-garde, he showed his work at international exhibitions. Participation in 'Twelve Americans', an exhibition mounted in New York by the Museum of Modern Art in 1956, made Francis well-known in America too. During this period his style changed from compositions with the picture surface covered in monochrome values to brightly coloured 'islands of colour' on white canvases. His calligraphic handling of brushwork and the lyrical character of his fluid colour now linked Frances with Far Eastern art, which he studied intensively. In 1957 he travelled around the world, visiting India, Thailand and Japan. His work was shown at exhibitions in Tokyo and Osaka. After moving restlessly between Paris, his home, and other great cities, Francis returned to California in 1962, settling at first in Santa Monica and then establishing a studio in Venice in 1963. During the 1960s Francis developed his own distinctive style of Spontaneous and Gestural Dripping. He guided oils, acrylic and watercolours across his canvases with circling and spraying movements.

From the mid-1960s Sam Francis began to re-organise the picture space in his paintings, which was probably a consequence of a private and professional orientation towards Japan. Strong primary colours retreated increasingly to the edges of his paintings. “The acrylic paints deliquesce and fuse into iridescent nuances of colour; the direction they flow, their concentration and density, are guided by Francis with consummate mastery. The freely fluctuating colour forms resulting from this frame the vast white field of the otherwise empty canvas like curtains stirred by a slight breeze or billow out like sails against the pull of the white emptiness.” (Hajo Düchting, in: Künstler. Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, Munich 1994, p. 10). The contrast between the glowing colour and the meditative tranquillity of the inner field is what produces the fascinating suction effect created in the present work.

Francis was not only a distinguished exponent of Action Painting. He also explored various printing techniques. Forcefully expressive compositions in several parts, some of them with running paint, are the hallmark of the 1980s. In his final phase, Francis executed commissions for large-scale murals. Sam Francis died in Santa Monica on 4 November 1994. [NB]
EXPERTISE: The work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné, published by Debra Burchett-Lere, released by University of California Press, Berkeley, and is recorded at the Sam Francis Foundation under the archive no. SF70-023
PROVENIENZ: From the artist's estate.
Private collection South Germany.
AUSSTELLUNG: Sam Francis: Werke 1969-1973, Galerie Kornfeld und Cie, Bern, October-November 1973, no. 8.

In good condition. With a few minor traces of rubbing.