KUSH ARTIST SAM FRANCIS

Sam Francis (1923 – 1994) occupies a prominent position in post-war American painting.   Francis is a masterful Abstract Expressionist whose work was greatly influenced by French Painters and Japanese artists.

Born on 25 June 1923 in San Mateo, California, Francis attended the University of California in Berkeley from 1941 to 1943, when he joined the Air Force. He left Air force in 1944 owing to illness (spinal tuberculosis), rendering him immobile and near death.

Francis took up painting as a form of therapy and through it found a way back to life. He decided to make this a serious undertaking studying under David Park in 1947 and completed his BA and MA at the University of California. He was greatly influenced by Abstract Expressionism, particularly the works of Clyfford Still and Jackson Pollock.   Francis came to be recognized for his brilliant use of color and balance of white negative space on his canvases.

While he followed and absorbed the new message of New York-based Abstract Expressionism, he was drawn to Paris in 1950. The magnetism of Monet’s light and Matisse’s colour actually were more durable foundations to his art than the drips and splatters derived from Pollock. He continued developing the use of white space and increased the dimensions of his paintings for greater emphasis.

Francis returned to California in 1962 and was then influenced by the West Coast School’s preoccupation with mysticism and Eastern philosophy. Blue had become a more dominant feature of his work since 1959 inspired both by personal suffering and the great joy of becoming a father for the first time in 1961. This led to combinations of hard colour and more disciplined structures with centrally placed rectangles during the 1970s.

There are few things more incredible than seeing a Sam Francis painting in person, such as the beautiful paintings hanging in the stairways of New York’s Museum of Contemporary Art.  To own a Sam Francis and be able to look at it and enjoy all of the life that leaps off of the canvas and into your soul is the foundation for an incredible smile.  A smile created by Sam Francis’ work is as KUSH as it gets!

Below, The KUSH Collection shares with you photographs from Francis’ 1999 exhibition in the Geffen Contemporary Gallery at MOCA.

Bio Sourced from http://www.samfrancisprints.com/frameset/biography.htm