Untitled

"His are works for the soul, colored dreams that suggest but do not force, reveal but do not expose. And, above all, his work is beautiful."
— (S. A. Martin, “Clouds of Beauty, An Interview with Sam Francis,” Sam Francis: This Permanent Water, exh. cat., Museo d’Arte Mendrisio, Milan, 1997, p. 53.)

Arcs of brilliant red and emerald green acrylic paint sweep across the expanse of Sam Francis’s Untitled, 1988. Atop lively sunflower yellow, sprays of warm blue and flecks of violet combine to form a symphony of color; the painting vibrates with joy. A rich core of royal purple grounds Untitled’s rippling composition, forming the axis around which everything whirls kaleidoscopically. Color was always a paramount consideration for Francis, who wrote in his journal: "Color is a series of harmonies, everywhere in the universe being divine, whole numbers lasting forever, adrift in time… And the last words will be those of the stars" (S. Francis, quoted in K. McKenna, "Sam Francis: A Force of Nature", Los Angeles Times, 18 August 1996).
Early on, Francis took inspiration from the "lyrical colorism" of French painters, including Jean-Antoine Watteau, Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard, affiliations that developed after he moved to Paris from Berkeley, California in 1950. Extended travel across Europe and Asia filtered into Francis’s lifelong engagement with color, resulting in a glittery, almost synthetic visual language that crystallized this aesthetic. By the 1980s, Francis’s chromatic explorations revealed themselves in voluptuous, meandering forms that he worked on from a studio in Venice, Los Angeles. "The role of the artist," said Francis, "is to create the cosmos for man" (S. Francis, quoted in K. McKenna, "Sam Francis: A Force of Nature", Los Angeles Times, 18 August 1996). Francis’s cosmos are designed with the belief in color as a life force, and in Untitled charged bands of bright paint rush forcefully along, electrifying and overpowering luminescent swaths, a cascade of radiant light.