Art Review: ‘Colour in Space’ by Sam Francis
Each September, the Pearl Lam Gallery will showcase the work of one distinguished Modern artist at its Pedder Building exhibition space. For 2016, we get to see the works from one of the greatest: those of Samuel “Sam” Lewis Francis (1923–1994).
Sam Francis was born in San Mateo and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He entered the University of California Berkley with an ambition in Medicine, which was interrupted by the Second World War. Francis enrolled into the Army Air Corps to become a pilot but he suffered severe back injuries after a plane crash during training.
For the four years when he was stuck to a hospital bed, Francis was given a set of watercolours and that was when he started to paint. He graduated from Berkley with a Master’s Degree in Art and he then moved to Paris for further studies. During the years in Paris, Francis drew everyone’s attention and praise. By 1956, he exhibited his work in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
Francis lived in the States, France and Japan and was fluent in multiple languages. His internationalist background can be clearly seen in his works, with inspirations drawn from calligraphy from Japan (especially the use of negative white space), colour field painting, French impressionism and San Francisco Bay Area abstract expressionism.
Francis’ works are more than just a fusion of techniques, they also bear a spiritual significance.
As once described by Debra Burchett-Lere,
“His works are infused with universal concepts in their balance between the physical and the spiritual, the material and the immaterial, mind and body, man and nature. His paintings reveal themselves through their silence with areas of white space and light-filled voids for meditation and contemplation.”
Whilst he worked on various media such as Canvas and paint, Francis’ oil on paper works are arguably the most successful of his time. The central part of Francis’ repertoire would be the ‘Blue Balls’ series in which, in his own words, ‘colour is light on fire’. The use of vibrant colours on negative white space showed an intensity that reflected his emotional state when he was combating various painful illnesses during the time of the execution.
Sam Francis’ artworks are displayed in over a hundred of museums worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris) and the Tate (London)
About his life’s work, Francis said,
“I work in a circular, gyro-like manner — a spiral…I keep coming back to something from before, but from a different point of view…a rearrangement of the psyche.”
Francis is indeed one of the most internationally acclaimed American painters of his generation.
Colour in Space: SAM FRANCIS 1923–1994
Exhibition ends on 12 November 2016
Pearl Lam Galleries, 6/F, Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong
Originally published at The Typewriter.
