Sam Francis - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Saturday, June 28, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Achille Cavellini, Brescia; Galleria dell'Ariete, Milan

  • Exhibited

    Turin, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, La Pittura Moderna Straniera nelle CollezioniPrivate Italiane, 1961; Bari, Pinacoteca Provinciale, Aspetti dell'Informale, 1971; Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Rassegna Participo Presente, 18 February - 1 April, 1973

  • Literature

    Exhibition catalogue, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, La Pittura Moderna Straniera nelle Collezioni Private Italiane, Turin, 1961, no. 195 (illustrated); Exhibition catalogue, Bari, Pinacoteca Provinciale, Aspetti dell'Informale, Bari BA, 1971, no. 3 (illustrated); Exhibition catalogue, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Rassegna Participo Presente, Ferrara, 1973 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Influenced by Tachisme and artists like Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still, the present lot reflects Sam Francis's style emerging out of Abstract Expressionism. A mixture of dripping and gesturing, the painting echoes the methods of allover painting true to his contemporaries, yet simultaneously shows his lyrical innovations specific to time spent in Paris.
    "In spite of Francis's inevitable attraction to the School of Paris's biomorphism (refined from Picasso by the likes of Jean Arp and Yves Tanguy), he didn't allow it to turn his abstractions into polite simplifications of still lifes or landscapes. In Paris, Francis hung around with Al Held and Norman Bluhm, two artists whose work is synonymous with American expansiveness and bombast. Francis continued to paint large, allover pictures, cobbled like an alley in the Marais with rounded, sausagey blocks of layered, pale, translucent colour. The canvases he painted during the Paris years strike today's eye as Francis's most contemporary and innovative pictures..." (P. Plagens, ‘Sunny Side Up: Abstract Expressionist painter Sam Francis' in ArtForum International, 1 March, 1999)

248

Untitled

1958
Gouache on paper laid down on canvas.
151.1 x 202.6 cm (59 1/2 x 79 3/4 in).
This work is registered in the Sam Francis Archives under SF58-247

Estimate
£450,000 - 550,000 

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

29 June 2008, 5pm
London