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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming Sam Francis Catalogue Raisonné edited by Debra Burchett-Lere and published by the University of California Press, and is registered with the Sam Francis Foundation as archive number SFP63-19.
Despite Sam Francis's roots as an American Abstract Expressionist, his interest in the French masters of colour such as Claude Monet, Henry Matisse and Pierre Bonnard informed much of his works. Francis once confessed being "intoxicated" with light, "not just the play of light and shadow, but the substance of which light is made" (S. Francis, quoted in Sam Francis, exh. cat., Bufalo, 1972, p. 16).
In the present work, painted after he had returned to California in the early sixties, "the visionary sense of time and space is evident ... in many ways, the most notable of which is his understanding and respect for the void. His voids are important as his marks. Rich with application, they will hang full and silent, sometimes in our present awareness, often in the future, and always imbued with the past. One senses that he is comfortable with silence. Writing about Pierre Bonnard ...…), Francis said:"'He reminds me that silence and arrest = ecstasy" (J. Butterfield, Sam Francis, exh. cat., Los Angeles, March-May 1980, p. 7).
Despite Sam Francis's roots as an American Abstract Expressionist, his interest in the French masters of colour such as Claude Monet, Henry Matisse and Pierre Bonnard informed much of his works. Francis once confessed being "intoxicated" with light, "not just the play of light and shadow, but the substance of which light is made" (S. Francis, quoted in Sam Francis, exh. cat., Bufalo, 1972, p. 16).
In the present work, painted after he had returned to California in the early sixties, "the visionary sense of time and space is evident ... in many ways, the most notable of which is his understanding and respect for the void. His voids are important as his marks. Rich with application, they will hang full and silent, sometimes in our present awareness, often in the future, and always imbued with the past. One senses that he is comfortable with silence. Writing about Pierre Bonnard ...…), Francis said:"'He reminds me that silence and arrest = ecstasy" (J. Butterfield, Sam Francis, exh. cat., Los Angeles, March-May 1980, p. 7).