Untitled

Painted in 1989, Untitled reflects the emotional and personal challenges Sam Francis confronted in the last years of his life. In his essay Sam Francis: A Painter’s Dialogue with Color, Light and Space William C. Agee describes a dramatic shift in style no doubt influenced by the loss of two close friends, and Francis’ diagnosis with prostate cancer. He writes: “[Francis] attacked the canvas, now even larger than before, with massive formations of some of the most powerful and intense color he had ever used. His paint pooled and flowed as if it were molten lava or primal matter. The red and yellows and greens became at points like physical entities built up in strata of low relief that spilled over the edges, just as his emotions could no longer be contained. These are some of Francis’s most powerful paintings, for he was working at a peak of emotional intensity that he perhaps had never attained before. He abandoned the touch of Monet, Bonnard, Matisse, and Rothko for a raw, visceral paint surface more in the tradition of van Gogh and the early Still, or a Pollock gone mad… The resulting works are of a physical and expressive magnitude virtually without parallel in the history of modern art.” (D. Burchett-Lere, ed., Sam Francis Catalogue Raisonne of Canvas and Panel Paintings 1946-1994, Berkeley, 2011, p. 115).