Lot 179
179
Sam Francis (1923-1994)
50 YEARS OF CONNOISSEURSHIP – PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION
SAM FRANCIS (1923-1994)

Untitled No. 5

Details
SAM FRANCIS (1923-1994)
Untitled No. 5
signed and dated ‘Sam Francis 73’ (on the reverse)
acrylic and oil on canvas
43 7/8 x 65 ¾in. (111.3 x 167cm.)
Painted in 1973
Provenance
André Emmerich Gallery, New York.
Private Collection, London (acquired from the above in 1973).
Anon. sale, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, 8 November 1979, lot 859.
Hokin Gallery Inc., Bay Harbor Islands.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1980.
Literature
D. Burchett-Lere (ed.), Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings, 1946-1994, Berkeley 2011, no. 596, DVD I (illustrated in colour).
Exhibited
New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Sam Francis: New Paintings, 1973.
Further Details
This work is included in the Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings, published by the University of California Berkeley Press (UC Press: 2011) under the No. SFF.596 and is also registered in the archives of the Sam Francis Foundation with the No. SFP73-18. This information is subject to change as scholarship continues by the Sam Francis Foundation.

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Lot Essay

‘Sam Francis made a life’s work of scattering leaves of colour, creating an elegant balance by messing things up, and it is his preference for incompleteness over purity that gives his paintings distinctive beauty and power. A restless curiosity and an appetite for visual pleasure fuelled his vision, and it was one that avoided the solemnity and absoluteness that characterized much twentieth-century abstraction’
(C. Burnett, Sam Francis: 1923-1994, London, 2003, unpaged).

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