1958, San Francis, Basel Mural I (detail) -- Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena)
From the museum label: Born in northern California and a member of the Army Air Corps in World War II, Sam Francis first turned to art when convalescing from a serious spinal injury sustained in training. Bedridden for close to three years, Francis turned to watercolors as therapy before fully committing to painting around 1946, and the qualities of the aqueous medium would inform his painting—even in oil—for the entirety of his career. By 1947 Francis had turned entirely to abstraction, and after studying and painting in the San Francisco area, he moved to Paris in 1950 for arguably the most formative decade of his career. There, in his "mother city," as he referred to it, he established himself as a leading painter of light and color, differentiating himself from the aggressive approach of the New York school of Abstract Expressionists, but still drawing on the gestural qualities of their work. Instead, Francis's luminous canvases, filled with harmonious color as well as large areas of lambent white, are more closely associated with the color-field painters that followed. His light-filled, sensitive palettes were inspired not just by his native California landscape, but by Claude Monet's waterlilies and Pierre Bonnard's late work.
1958, San Francis, Basel Mural I (detail) -- Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena)
From the museum label: Born in northern California and a member of the Army Air Corps in World War II, Sam Francis first turned to art when convalescing from a serious spinal injury sustained in training. Bedridden for close to three years, Francis turned to watercolors as therapy before fully committing to painting around 1946, and the qualities of the aqueous medium would inform his painting—even in oil—for the entirety of his career. By 1947 Francis had turned entirely to abstraction, and after studying and painting in the San Francisco area, he moved to Paris in 1950 for arguably the most formative decade of his career. There, in his "mother city," as he referred to it, he established himself as a leading painter of light and color, differentiating himself from the aggressive approach of the New York school of Abstract Expressionists, but still drawing on the gestural qualities of their work. Instead, Francis's luminous canvases, filled with harmonious color as well as large areas of lambent white, are more closely associated with the color-field painters that followed. His light-filled, sensitive palettes were inspired not just by his native California landscape, but by Claude Monet's waterlilies and Pierre Bonnard's late work.