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Lot Essay
Sam Francis, a California native, is widely regarded as one of the most important painters of the Abstract Expressionist style. Francis lived and worked in Paris in the 1950's and achieved his first success in France. After returning to the United States to spend one year in New York City he settled in Santa Monica, California, in 1961. Francis traveled widely, exhibiting frequently in Europe and particularly in Japan where he achieved immense celebrity.
Francis' work of the 1950's was abstract, luminous and painterly rather than gestural. He was obsessed with the play of light and was influenced by the atmospheric color veils of Mark Rothko and organic forms of Clyfford Still. Francis' signature paintings of the early 1950's are overlays of serial but asymmetrical biomorphic forms saturated with red, blue and yellow. The present work, from 1953, is an important example of his highest achievement of this seminal period, exemplifying his intuitive method of painting fields of various sized clusters and drips usually in these same three primary colors on a white ground.
Francis' work of the 1950's was abstract, luminous and painterly rather than gestural. He was obsessed with the play of light and was influenced by the atmospheric color veils of Mark Rothko and organic forms of Clyfford Still. Francis' signature paintings of the early 1950's are overlays of serial but asymmetrical biomorphic forms saturated with red, blue and yellow. The present work, from 1953, is an important example of his highest achievement of this seminal period, exemplifying his intuitive method of painting fields of various sized clusters and drips usually in these same three primary colors on a white ground.