One of the most profound Abstract Expressionists, American artist Sam Francis (1923–1994) is among the first post-World War II painters to develop an international reputation. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1950 with a degree in art, Francis moved to Paris, where he was singled out by Time Magazine as, “the hottest American painter in Paris these days.” For the next four decades he traveled and studied extensively, maintaining studios in Bern, Paris, Tokyo, Mexico City, New York and Northern and Southern California. Regarded as a leading interpreter of color and light, his work is informed by New York abstract expressionism, color field painting, Chinese and Japanese art, early twentieth-century French painting, and his own California Bay Area roots.
Francis created a prolific body of paintings on canvas as well as works on paper, prints and monotypes, housed in major museum collections around the world (Centre Pompidou and Fondation Cartier in Paris; The Tate, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Kunstmuseum Basel; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), and Guggenheim Museum, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Chicago Art Institute, Illinois; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; National Gallery of Victoria, Australia; and Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, to mention but a few).
