After serving in the Army Air Corps, American painter and printmaker Sam Francis (1923-1994) completed a BA (1949) and MA (1950) at the University of California, Berkeley. Emerging while Abstract Expressionism gained prominence in New York, his style synthesizes a similar interest in pure color and loose expressive abstract forms, particularly distinguished from his peers by an often semi-translucent, bright jewel-like handlings of pigment and media. Hesistant to align with any one school or group Francis began to exhibit alongside Art Informel artists in the mid 50s and then was deemed by Clement Greenberg worthy of inclusion alongside others practicing ‘post-painterly abstraction.’ Francis’s work has been exhibited across the globe and his work has been acquired by a plethora of major institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, The Kunstmuseum Basel, the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo and the Centre Pompidou-Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris.
Photo: Copyright © 2015 Sam Francis Foundation.
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