Lot Essay
First exhibited in Dorothy Miller's landmark exhibition 12 Americans, at the Museum of Modern Art, Grey is an important painting dating from the height of Sam Francis' breakthrough years when he was working in Paris. With its dark fragile border, defining the edges of a shimmering grey mass of color and light, it shares similarities, despite its name, among the artist's highly-regarded "Black" paintings of the early 1950s. A fluid and amorphous work that uses color to create an evocative but also enigmatic spatial entity, its bright and shimmering center appears to radiate with energy while at the same time playing with the viewer's perception and the intrinsically transient nature of light itself.
It was while hospitalised and bed-ridden after an airplane crash in 1943 that Francis had first become fascinated by light, seeing it as the quintessential "material" of life while watching, for days on end, the patterns it made and its shimmering play across the ceiling of his hospital room. What interested him most, and what continued to drive his work well into the 1950s, was what he described as the material "quality of light itself, not just the play of light, but the substance of which light is made." (S. Francis, quoted in P. Selz, Sam Francis, New York, 1975, p. 34).
Towards this end Francis was also greatly influenced by the pioneering use of color and light in the work of Claude Monet, Henri Matisse and, in particular, Pierre Bonnard. His move to Paris in 1950 led to color becoming temporarily expunged from his work as Francis, who was always very sensitive to light, immediately reacted strongly to what he described as the hazy "beautiful cerulean grey" light of the Paris sky. There, throughout the early 1950s, and although he had seen no monochrome paintings at this time, he soon established a reputation as what Time magazine described as the "hottest young painter" in the city with his paintings concentrating on only one color, usually white or grey.
Grey is a work that stands at the heart of Francis' concerns from this period. Reflecting the artist's detached and deeply spiritual and meditative approach to art, the subtly differentiated coloring of the cell-like forms of the painting seems also to articulate a living material essence at the center of the work - a mystical portrait of light itself pouring onto the surface of the canvas. At the same time, this apparently infinite and boundless entity is confined by the thin febrile border of predominantly black and brightly colored cells at the edge.
It was while hospitalised and bed-ridden after an airplane crash in 1943 that Francis had first become fascinated by light, seeing it as the quintessential "material" of life while watching, for days on end, the patterns it made and its shimmering play across the ceiling of his hospital room. What interested him most, and what continued to drive his work well into the 1950s, was what he described as the material "quality of light itself, not just the play of light, but the substance of which light is made." (S. Francis, quoted in P. Selz, Sam Francis, New York, 1975, p. 34).
Towards this end Francis was also greatly influenced by the pioneering use of color and light in the work of Claude Monet, Henri Matisse and, in particular, Pierre Bonnard. His move to Paris in 1950 led to color becoming temporarily expunged from his work as Francis, who was always very sensitive to light, immediately reacted strongly to what he described as the hazy "beautiful cerulean grey" light of the Paris sky. There, throughout the early 1950s, and although he had seen no monochrome paintings at this time, he soon established a reputation as what Time magazine described as the "hottest young painter" in the city with his paintings concentrating on only one color, usually white or grey.
Grey is a work that stands at the heart of Francis' concerns from this period. Reflecting the artist's detached and deeply spiritual and meditative approach to art, the subtly differentiated coloring of the cell-like forms of the painting seems also to articulate a living material essence at the center of the work - a mystical portrait of light itself pouring onto the surface of the canvas. At the same time, this apparently infinite and boundless entity is confined by the thin febrile border of predominantly black and brightly colored cells at the edge.