Sam Francis

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.