Idbury Prints: An online gallery of original fine art prints

SAM FRANCIS (American / 1923-1994)

Sam Francis was a major American Abstract Expressionist, closely associated with Joan Mitchell and Walasse Ting. He is regarded as one of the key American exponents of Tachisme or Art Informel. Samuel Lewis Francis was born in San Mateo, California, in 1923. Invialided out of the US Airforce with spinal tuberculosis, Francis initially took up art as therapy, before devoting himself to it as a vocation. As well as paintings, Sam Francis produced a large number of lithographs, etchings, and screenprints, immersing himself so profoundly in the process that, "When I am working with these prints, I am the paper, I am the paint, I am the machine." There is a catalogue raisonné of his prints 1960-1990 by Connie W. Lembark.