Biographie

1923–1994

Sam Fran­cis was born in San Mateo, Cal­i­for­nia. Being wound­ed dur­ing a test flight for US Air Force dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, Fran­cis was hos­pi­talised for sev­er­al years. When he received a vis­it from the artist David Park, Fran­cis start­ed painting.

Upon leav­ing hos­pi­tal Fran­cis enrolled at Berke­ley Uni­ver­si­ty where he stud­ied art, botany, med­i­cine and psy­chol­o­gy. Fran­cis grad­u­at­ed in 1950 with an MA in Art. At the time, Fran­cis was first influ­enced by the Abstract Expres­sion­ism of Mark Rothko, Clyf­ford Still and Jack­son Pollock.

In 1950 Fran­cis moved to Paris where he under­went two influ­ences: the Tachism of Jean-Paul Riopelle and the study of Monet’s ‘Waterlil­lies’. His series of white paint­ings dat­ed 1950–1952 dis­play Fran­cis’ sen­si­tiv­i­ty to light in the exquis­ite­ly sub­tle and neb­u­lous surfaces.

1953 was a key-year in his devel­op­ment with the cre­ation of ‘Big Red’. When includ­ed in the 1956 exhi­bi­tion ‘Twelve Artists’ at the muse­um of Mod­ern Art in New York, Fran­cis gained an inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion. Fran­cis paint­ed large murals for the Kun­sthalle, Basel (1956 – 1958) and for the for the Chase Man­hat­tan Bank, New York (1959). In 1960 the Kun­sthalle, Bern host­ed a first ret­ro­spec­tive. The influ­en­tial Mod­ern Art crit­ic Clement Green­berg cred­it­ed Fran­cis as a mem­ber of the New York Abstract Expres­sion­ist School.

Fol­low­ing his time in Paris and trav­els to New York and Tokyo, Fran­cis returned to Cal­i­for­nia in 1962 and joined in the West Coast’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with mys­ti­cism and Zen Bud­dhism. Dur­ing 1960 — 1963 Fran­cis cre­at­ed the ‘Blue Balls’ series, con­sist­ing of bio­mor­phic blue forms and drips. In 1965 Fran­cis start­ed a series of paint­ings that fea­tured large areas of open can­vas, min­i­mal colour and strong line. His work evolved fur­ther whilst in inten­sive Jun­gian analy­sis with Dr. James Kirsch in 1971; Fran­cis had start­ed to pay care­ful atten­tion to his dreams and the uncon­scious images they suggested.

Dur­ing the ear­ly 1970 Fran­cis asso­ci­at­ed with the ‘Fresh Air’ paint­ing of Joan Mitchell and Wal­lase Ting. These colour­ful works explore loose­ly geo­met­ric forms and sym­bols, cre­at­ed by adding pools, drips and splat­ters of colour to wet bands of paint applied with a roller. After 1980 the for­mal struc­ture of the grid grad­u­al­ly dis­ap­peared from Fran­cis’ work.

Fran­cis was an active print­mak­er, own­ing the San­ta Mon­i­ca Litho Shop press, and the Lapis Press. Fran­cis died in San­ta Mon­i­ca in 1994 after a last burst of cre­ativ­i­ty dur­ing which he com­plet­ed a daz­zling series of small paintings.