Sam Francis was born in San Mateo, California, in 1923. Having studied painting and art history, he received his BA in 1949 and his MA in 1950 from the University of California at Berkeley. Francis moved to Paris in 1950, where was profoundly inspired by the work of Monet, Bonnard and Matisse. It is there that he also became inspired by Tachisme—a style of abstraction deriving from the word ‘tache’, meaning stain or splash, referring to the seemingly spontaneous manner by which paint could be applied to a canvas. In 1952, Francis had his first solo exhibition at Galerie Nina Dausset in Paris. He went on to show his work globally at several prestigious institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1967); the Centre national d'art contemporain, Fondation Rothschild, Paris (1968); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1972); and the Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan (1988). Francis died in 1994.
Francis’s works celebrate light and color, and Untitled, 1957, is no exception. The canvas, which seems to be divided largely into blue and red cell-like forms, evokes a dynamic sense of tension. In some areas, the red and blue forms intertwine, weaving in between one another. Yet in other zones, they are firmly divided by boundaries of negative space, as if repelling against each other. This push-and-pull creates a sense of high energy and movement. The painting is highly gestural, intense in its brushwork and thickly layered opacities. The paint drips and splatters, characteristic of tachisme, enhance the work’s dynamism, adding a sense of speed and movement as one’s eye moves from a rapid flick of paint to a leisurely trickle, creating a bridge between the work and the process of its creation.
Untitled, 1957, serves as a quintessential example of the lyrical qualities which define the artist’s works. At the same time, it embodies Francis’s unique sense of verve in terms of colour and movement, creating a canvas that is lively and mesmerising.
