American post-war artist Sam Francis was born in San Mateo, California in 1923. Twenty years later, in the middle of World War II, Francis enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps before leaving a year later due to spinal injuries. After leaving the war, Francis began painting as a hobby but took it up seriously under the instruction of painter David Park.
Francis then went on to re-enroll at the University of California Berkeley, as he had been a student there for two years before World War II, graduating with a BA in 1949 and a MA in 1950. Francis continued to paint and grow as an artist and had his first solo exhibit in 1952 at the Galerie Nina Dausset in Paris, France. Throughout the rest of his life, Francis went on to receive several more solo exhibitions at the Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, California; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan, and Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Fondation Adolphe de Rothschild, Paris, France, among many others.
Regarding his practice, Francis was a painter and printmaker who created his own style of painting—he was never associated with just one art movement. Yet, Francis had many influences, including abstract expressionism, surrealism, impressionism, as well as French and Japanese landscape painting. The influence of these art styles and movements are seen most clearly in Francis’ vibrant colors, powerful use of space, compositional movement, sensitivity towards light, and overwhelming scale.