SAM FRANCIS PAINTINGS

Sam Francis paintings have received international acclaim for their atmospheric and transformative nature, celebrated for their vibrant color and light, and characterized by a balance of openness and containment. Francis, an American Abstract Expressionist, was a pioneer of a unique and complex vocabulary which evolved over the course of the artist’s career. His powerful canvases, often massive in scale are often associated with the Color Field movement of the 1950s. Sam Francis paintings explode with intense color and light and a dynamic natural expression for which Francis has become known for.

Sam Francis paintings are the result of the artist’s life in Paris, Switzerland, Japan and California where he made new advances in his painting techniques. Francis modernized the language of Impressionists and transformed it into a contemporary vocabulary.

The artist was also deeply influenced by Jungian archetypes, and the Japanese concept of Ma – the artistic interpretation of empty space. In Sam Francis paintings you see these aesthetic concepts explored. The negative space is revealed in the unpainted canvas or empty white areas where the artist would then contain the space with colorful borders or edges.

Francis also painted in abstract patterns and grids leaving these open designed areas for which Francis has become known. Francis used techniques like dripping, pouring and splattering in his colorful compositional style. In Francis’ paintings you can see the artist’s dynamic brushstrokes emphasized in the edges of his paintings surrounding this empty white space within.

Francis brought a different approach to his canvases whether he worked in acrylic, gouache, watercolor, or oil. With these vibrant color transitions, overlapping black and white borders, empty open spaces, and colorful edges of containment, Sam Francis paintings have an arresting signature. Sam Francis continues to be celebrated as the twentieth century’s leading interpreters of light and darkness, color and nature.