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Lot Essay
This work is identified with the archival identification number of SFF.1640 in consideration for the forthcoming addendum to the Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings, to be published by the Sam Francis Foundation. This information is subject to change as scholarship continues by the Sam Francis Foundation.
Sam Francis’s chromatically rich compositions have their origins in the 1940s when, during a prolonged period of convalescence in hospital, the artist would watch the pattern of reflected light dancing across the ceiling. In Untitled, he combines high-keyed color with collaged paper elements to produce a dazzling kaleidoscope of vivid pigments, which almost dance across the surface of the sheet. As can be seen in the present example, Francis's work is concerned at its very heart with color and light, just like work of his hero, Henri Matisse. For Matisse, color represented sensations which he condensed until they constituted a picture, Francis took this further, declaring that color was the "real substance for me, the real underlying thing which drawing and painting are not ... colors are intensities" (S. Francis, quoted in W. C. Agee, "Sam Francis: Coming of Age in the Mother City," Sam Francis 1953-1959, New York, 2009, p.10).
Francis comes from the tradition of the San Francisco Bay Area aesthetic, though rather than working with figurative subject matters like the forerunners of the group, he was more interested in space, composition and the possibilities of his painterly medium. His early works have a restrained color palette, which let the inherent qualities of the medium dictate the direction of the work. Around the mid-1950s however, he developed an interest in the possibilities of color, incorporating all the lessons he learned about composition and form in order to transform color into form, imbuing it with a volumetric quality. Here, Francis explores that interplay between light and color, embracing the sense of freedom that it gave him. "I like to fly, to soar, to float like a cloud,” he once said, “but I am tied down to place. No matter where I am... it's always the same. Painting is a way in and out" (Sam Francis quoted from P. Selz, Sam Francis, New York, 1982, p. 14).
Sam Francis’s chromatically rich compositions have their origins in the 1940s when, during a prolonged period of convalescence in hospital, the artist would watch the pattern of reflected light dancing across the ceiling. In Untitled, he combines high-keyed color with collaged paper elements to produce a dazzling kaleidoscope of vivid pigments, which almost dance across the surface of the sheet. As can be seen in the present example, Francis's work is concerned at its very heart with color and light, just like work of his hero, Henri Matisse. For Matisse, color represented sensations which he condensed until they constituted a picture, Francis took this further, declaring that color was the "real substance for me, the real underlying thing which drawing and painting are not ... colors are intensities" (S. Francis, quoted in W. C. Agee, "Sam Francis: Coming of Age in the Mother City," Sam Francis 1953-1959, New York, 2009, p.10).
Francis comes from the tradition of the San Francisco Bay Area aesthetic, though rather than working with figurative subject matters like the forerunners of the group, he was more interested in space, composition and the possibilities of his painterly medium. His early works have a restrained color palette, which let the inherent qualities of the medium dictate the direction of the work. Around the mid-1950s however, he developed an interest in the possibilities of color, incorporating all the lessons he learned about composition and form in order to transform color into form, imbuing it with a volumetric quality. Here, Francis explores that interplay between light and color, embracing the sense of freedom that it gave him. "I like to fly, to soar, to float like a cloud,” he once said, “but I am tied down to place. No matter where I am... it's always the same. Painting is a way in and out" (Sam Francis quoted from P. Selz, Sam Francis, New York, 1982, p. 14).