FORWARD

David Benrimon Fine Art’s exhibition “Sam Francis: Abstract Impressionist,” traces Francis’ prolific five-decade career with a selection of paintings, works on paper, and prints from his expansive oeuvre. Categorized as an “Abstract Impressionist,” a term coined by Elaine de Kooning in 1951 for artists who are more concerned with the qualities of light, space and air than the painting’s surface, this show focuses on Francis’ full investment in luminosity and the potential of color. Our remarkable works from various artistic phases reveal Francis’ exploration of the possibilities of bold color, gesture, perception of space, and the dynamic play of light and dark.

Born in California in 1923, Francis initially became fascinated with light as it shifted above his bed while serving in the US Army Corps. His foray into painting came when he was wrapped in a full body plaster cast at the age of twenty-one and was given a set of watercolors as physical therapy. After completing his undergraduate studies the 1950s, Francis moved to Paris where he became profoundly influenced by Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Claude Monet – French Impressionist masters who were pioneers in arresting light on canvas. This captivation defined Francis’ entire practice. His unique visual idiom that explored light, color and space reconfigured Abstract Expressionism’s transcendental understanding of painting through Impressionist mechanics. Instead of focusing on the expressivity of an individual artist, Francis prioritized the formal arrangement of the picture’s composition. By the end of the decade, according to the art historian Eric de Chassey, Francis was “Innovative in what he knew how to receive, and transform, from very different influences. Francis effectively combined the contributions of the first generation of Abstract Expressionism and of French modernism born of Impressionism.”

From the “Monochromatic Paintings” of the 1950s, to the “Edge/Open/Sail Paintings” of the 1960s, to the “Matrix or Grid Works” of the early 1980s, Francis’ dramatic and richly colorful canvases feature drips, pools of paint, and delicate splatters of pigment. They explode with color, as if pulsating with energy or propelled by an internal velocity. While Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting were on the rise in America, Francis’ chromatic intensity and internal energy singled him as one of the most innovative post-war artists of his generation. Francis’ widely acclaimed work resides in prestigious private collections worldwide and permanent museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.