“I painted to stay alive” said Sam Francis.

Confined to bed for three years following an airplane accident in 1943 during his service as a pilot in the USA Air Force, painting became for Sam Francis a way of survival and the strength of his recovery.

« Paint only the background, the location of the infinite in painting. » Sam Francis

Using the all over technique, Francis’s canvases express the infinite, the space with neither beginning nor end, parts of sky as Francis explored them when he flew over the desert.

Only the mark is form, subject to chance, which emerges spontaneously. The figure dissolves, leaving “the space that spreads between things” to appear.

Between Clifford Still and Mark Rothko for Color Field, and of Jackson Pollock for Action Painting and drip painting, Sam Francis was also inspired by the innovative practices of Matisse in terms of colour, dimensionality of space and the purity of form and simplification of gesture.

“There is no development in my paintings. There is a rhythm. They are all intense from beginning to end.” Sam Francis

Francis’s work is prolific, exploring rhythms that are as varied as they are audacious : deeps, mosaics, blue balls, mandalas… an explosive oeuvre, borrowed from mysticism, spirituality and philosophy – a discipline he studied – nourished by his numerous journeys around the world, from Japan to Mexico via India and France.

“In him there is a cosmic and metaphysical feeling for a form of nature that is both welcoming and excessive on the scale of Northern California and the Pacific.” Yves Michaud

The Sam Francis Foundation based in California is preparing the catalogue raisonné of the artist’s works, among other projects. The Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings, 1946–1994 has already been published. The second volume, covering unique works on paper, is currently being prepared.