A culmination of the artist’s illustrious career, Sam Francis’s Untitled, circa 1990, showcases the artist’s unmatched ability as a colorist and abstract painter. Rendered in monumental scale, Untitled embodies the key tenets of Francis’s practice and creative development. As drips of paint are flung and poured across the vast surface, the dynamism of the implied action beautifully juxtaposes the serenity of the central green rectangle. Calligraphic lines enliven the composition, referencing Francis’s own exuberance and joie-de-vivre felt while bringing paint to life.
Untitled communicates the varied influences on Francis’s practice, ranging from Abstract Expressionism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as well as Asian art and philosophy. While the painterly drips and splashes recall his artistic forebears such as Jackson Pollock, they equally evidence the artist's study of haboku, traditional Japanese flung-ink painting. Throughout his career, Francis traveled and studied extensively, maintaining studios in Bern, Paris, Tokyo, Mexico City, New York and Northern and Southern California. Constant travels, with time to gaze out of plane windows, provided Francis with creative inspiration, as he was deeply fascinated by light, air, and space. Untitled exemplifies what William Agee defines as the core of Francis’s practice: “Paint used generously and put in the service of color and its energy and power to convey deep feelings is the hallmark, from beginning to end, of Francis’s art.” (William C. Agee, Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings 1946-1994, Berkeley, 2011, pp. 12-13)