The Upper Red, 1963

by Sam Francis

Print : lithography 50 x 65.5 x 0.3 cm

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About the artwork

Type

Numbered and limited to 300 copies

Signature

Stamped

Authenticity

Sold with certificate of Authenticity from the gallery

Invoice from the gallery


Medium

Print: lithography

Dimensions cm inch

50 x 65.5 x 0.3 cm Height x Width x Depth

Framing

Not framed


Tags

Abstract artworks

Abstract art

Abstract expressionism

Dark blue

Artwork sold in perfect condition

Artwork location: Switzerland

Sam Francis' pictorial abstraction is most often associated with the American Abstract Expressionist movement, but the artist also spent a lot of time in Paris and connected with the parallel Art Informel movement in Europe.

The artist's most iconic works are characterized by splashes of saturated color that populate the edges of the canvas to emphasize the bright white void in the center. This contrast between the dynamism of the artist's color palette and the austere plan of the white image demonstrates the artist's concern for the relationships between space, color and light, as opposed to psychological tendencies. expressive by contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock.
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About the seller

TGP Auction • Switzerland

Artsper seller since 2020

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Collector’s Guide

Imagine it at home

Sam Francis, The Upper Red
Sam Francis

Sam Francis

United States  • 1923  - 1994

​Master Artists

"Sam Francis's paintings are a journey into a dream, a voyage into the landscapes of the soul where colours are lights on fire."

Samuel Lewis Francis (1923–1994) is an American artist, born the 25th of June1923 in San Mateo, California, USA. He died on 4th of November 1994 in Santa Monica. He developed a new aesthetics of colours and a new conception of the canvas. Alongside names such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, Sam Francis is an artist who has succeeded in demonstrating a total mastery of abstract expressionism's impassioned and spontaneous genre.

At the age of 20 he joined the air force and in 1944 he crashed in the middle of a desert with his airplane during an exercise. He was hospitalised during two years and that's when he started to paint. "My painting comes from my disease. I left the hospital by painting. My body suffered but since I was capable of painting I recovered."

Leaving the hospital, Sam Francis started to study art at Berkeley and in 1946 he got in contact with the abstract art as he attended a course of the artist Clyfford Still. He left for Paris in 1948-1949 where he met with american artists that we today call action painters. He was inspired by their different techniques like dripping and all-over.

It was in 1952 at the Galerie Nina Dausset in Paris that Sam Francis's had his first exhibition which was followed by two others at Galerie Rive Droite.

Ever since his accident Sam Francis tried to convey the feeling of infinity which he had caught a glimpse of in the desert. To him, the white canvas interfuses with heaven and he decides to paint nothing but the background, representing infinity. It's "the space inbetween the things" that interests him. Just like the spots all elements enable an interpretation as they have been eliminated, depth is what rests, "depth is all".

His work has been exhibited in numerous institutions and galleries all over the world. Today Sam Francis is represented in most museums of modern and contemporary art e.g. in New York, Los Angeles, Paris Zurich and at Tate Gallery in London. The Museum Idemitsu in Tokyo has the most important collection of his paintings. An exhibition of his "Years in Paris" was held at la Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in 1995 shortly after his passing.


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