21 Facts About Sam Francis

Samuel Lewis Francis was an American painter and printmaker.

Sam Francis later developed a strong bond with his stepmother, Virginia Peterson Francis.

Sam Francis attended San Mateo High School in the early 1940s.

Sam Francis was in the hospital for several years, and it was while there, after being visited by artist David Park in 1945, that he began to paint.

Sam Francis received both his BA degree and MA degree in Art from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied botany, medicine, and psychology.

Sam Francis was initially influenced by the work of abstract expressionists such as Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky and Clyfford Still.

Sam Francis later became loosely associated with the second generation of abstract expressionists, including Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler, who were increasingly interested in the expressive use of color.

Sam Francis charted his own trajectory as one of the first global artists working around the world.

Sam Francis spent the 1950s in Paris, having his first exhibition there at the Galerie Nina Dausset in 1952.

Between 1950 and 1958 Sam Francis spent time and painted in Paris, the south of France, Tokyo, Mexico City, Bern and New York.

In 1965 Sam Francis started a series of paintings that featured large areas of open canvas, minimal color and strong line.

Sam Francis's work evolved further after he began intensive Jungian analysis with Dr James Kirsch in 1971 and began paying careful attention to his dreams and the unconscious images they suggested.

Sam Francis was extremely active as a printmaker, creating numerous etchings, lithographs and monotypes, many of which were executed in Santa Monica at the Litho Shop, which Francis owned.

In 1984 Sam Francis founded the Lapis Press with the goal of producing unusual and timely texts in visually compelling formats.

Sam Francis died in Santa Monica and was buried in Olema, in Marin County, California.

Sam Francis was married five times, and was the father of four children.

Sam Francis was married from 1947 through 1952 to Vera Miller, a high school girlfriend, then to California painter Muriel Goodwin then to Japanese painter Teruko Yokoi with whom he had a daughter, Kayo.

Sam Francis married his last wife, painter Margaret Smith, in a Shinto ceremony in Japan in 1985.

Sam Francis's work has been seen most often and best understood in Europe and Japan.

Paintings by Sam Francis can be found in international museum collections including those of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The [Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California], The Kunstmuseum Basel, the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou-Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris.

On May 11,2010, a 1957 Sam Francis painting titled Middle Blue was sold at auction for $6,354,500, a record for the artist.