Artists

Sam Francis

San Mateo, USA 1923-1994

The American artist Sam Francis was born in San Mateo in 1923. In 1944 the training plane he was on board crashed violently over the Arizona desert. The accident caused the artist a spinal injury resulting in spinal tuberculosis. The disease forces him to bed and it is to distract himself from the pain that he begins to paint.

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Initially his paintings are characterized by monochrome and bright colors, which the artist uses almost as a celebration of his survival from that tragic misfortune. Later his works are replaced by paintings with splashes, drips and brush strokes of even more brilliant colours. He then creates pieces in which he brings out the empty white spaces between the painted edges of the canvas. In 1970 he began to create a series of lithographs and monotypes influenced by Abstract Expressionism and Color field painting (literally "color field painting", an artistic movement in which large canvases are used on which the color is spread).

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His works are exhibited in numerous international museums such as: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); The Broad, Los Angeles; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena; Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo; Kunstmuseum Basel; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Center Pompidou, Paris; the Tate Collection, London.