Made with FlowPaper - Flipbook Maker
The Fuller Building 41 East 57th Street, Second Floor New York, NY 10022 212-628-1600 • info@benrimon.com • www.davidbenrimon.com © 2019, David Benrimon Fine Art LLC Curated by Isabel Dicker March 3 - May 1, 2020 Artwork © Sam Francis Foundation, California/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. FORWARD / 6 THE EARLY WORKS / 8 THE VOID SERIES / 16 THE FRESH AIR & MATRIX SERIES / 22 THE LAST WORKS / 30 PRINTS / 38David Benrimon Fine Art’s exhibition “Sam Francis: Abstract Impressionist,” traces Francis’ prolific five-decade career with a selection of paintings, works on paper, and prints from his expansive oeuvre. Categorized as an “Abstract Impressionist,” a term coined by Elaine de Kooning in 1951 for artists who are more concerned with the qualities of light, space and air than the painting’s surface, this show focuses on Francis’ full investment in luminosity and the potential of color. Our remarkable works from various artistic phases reveal Francis’ exploration of the possibilities of bold color, gesture, perception of space, and the dynamic play of light and dark. Born in California in 1923, Francis initially became fascinated with light as it shifted above his bed while serving in the US Army Corps. His foray into painting came when he was wrapped in a full body plaster cast at the age of twenty-one and was given a set of watercolors as physical therapy. After completing his undergraduate studies the 1950s, Francis moved to Paris where he became profoundly influenced by Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Claude Monet – French Impressionist masters who were pioneers in arresting light on canvas. This captivation defined Francis’ entire practice. His unique visual idiom that explored light, color and space reconfigured Abstract Expressionism’s transcendental understanding of painting through Impressionist mechanics. Instead of focusing on the expressivity of an individual artist, Francis prioritized the formal arrangement of the picture’s composition. By the end of the decade, according to the art historian Eric de Chassey, Francis was “Innovative in what he knew how to receive, and transform, from very different influences. Francis effectively combined the contributions of the first generation of Abstract Expressionism and of French modernism born of Impressionism.” From the “Monochromatic Paintings” of the 1950s, to the “Edge/Open/Sail Paintings” of the 1960s, to the “Matrix or Grid Works” of the early 1980s, Francis’ dramatic and richly colorful canvases feature drips, pools of paint, and delicate splatters of pigment. They explode with color, as if pulsating with energy or propelled by an internal velocity. While Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting were on the rise in America, Francis’ chromatic intensity and internal energy singled him as one of the most innovative post-war artists of his generation. Francis’ widely acclaimed work resides in prestigious private collections worldwide and permanent museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. L. Finkelstein. “New Look: Abstract Impressionism” in ARTnews 55, no. 1, 1956. E. de Chassey. “Sam Francis, post-impressioniste?” in D. Abadie, Sam Fracis, les anness parisiennes, 1950-1961, exh. cat., Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1995, p. 54.THE EARLY WORKS In 1950, after finishing his undergraduate studies, Francis left San Francisco to embark on a journey to find himself in the eternal capital of the art world, Paris. There, he attended the Atelier Fernand Léger, where he was exposed to the work of Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse, French masters who profoundly influenced Francis’ artistic practice. In 1962, Francis reminisced, “Paris was a beautiful basin for my ideas to settle out of solution.” The following works trace the artist’s first real-world push into the world of painting. This early period is best characterized by biomorphic and cell-like forms floating on subtle, neutral monochromatic backgrounds, as seen in Untitled, an ink wash on paper from 1950 (Fig. 1). That same year, Francis was shown alongside his European contemporaries in his first group show at the Salon de l’Art libre at the Palais de New York. As his time in Europe progressed, vibrant color became central to Francis’ work, shifting his practice to produce more lively chromatic compositions. The 1956-1957 watercolor Yellow, Blue & Orange features boundless movement and strong colors, a notable departure from his earlier series (Fig. 2). In 1956, Francis was included in the MoMA’s “12 Americans” exhibition, expanding his prominence to the American art world as well. In the 1960s, after relocating to Tokyo, Francis began to introduce cultural influences into his work. This ushered in a productive period that would produce some of the artist’s strongest works yet. He absorbed the gestural styles of “sumi-e” painting, and the “haboku” or splashed ink within “Sesshu Toyo.” Francis also drew on the white space from the concept of “ma,” which he began to employ as a reach into the spiritual world and as a means to discover profound meaning. This stage, known as the “Blue Balls” series, features dynamic works comprised of free-floating, cell- like forms dancing among splattered paint as seen in Untitled, 1964 (Fig. 3). This phase also alluded to his health concerns and possible sterility. Francis’ art, yet again, became the counterpoint to the physical pain he often endured. P. Colt. “The Painting of Sam Francis” in Art Journal 22, no. 1, Fall 1962, p. 2.Next >