Artist: Sam Francis American (1923-1994)
Title: Cloud Rock and Kayo 4 Years Old - Red Eye
Plate: 1C.22
Original lithograph on white wove paper
From the One Cent Life Portfolio
From edition of 2000
Printed by Maurice Beaudet, Paris, 1964
Published by E.W. Kornfield, Bern, Switzerland
Signed in the plate lower left
Unumbered as issued
Unobtrusive center vertical fold as issued
Reference: The Prints of Sam Francis A Catalogue Raisonné 1960-1990' by Connie Lembark, Cat. No. L.80 & L.81
Collections: British Museum, London, MOMA, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Stedelijk Collection, Amsterdam, National Gallery of Australia
Shipped boxed flat.
Certificate of Authenticity.
Image Size: 22 1/4 in x 15 1/4 in 56.5 cm x 38.7 cm
Sheet Size: 23 in x 16 1/8 in 58.4 cm x 40.9 cm
Price: $750.00
"Color is born of the interpenetration of light and dark." Sam Francis
"The personal lives of painters are tragic and inevitable and do not explain the artist. For the artist is his work and no longer human." Sam Francis
Sam Francis
Sam Francis occupies a prominent position in post-war American painting. Although associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement and Clement Greenberg's Post-Painterly Abstraction, unlike many American painters of he time he had direct and prolonged exposure to French painting and to Japanese art which had an individual impact on his work. (samfrancis.com)
"Francis’ most iconic works are characterized by saturated splashes of color that populate the edges of the canvas in order to emphasize the luminous white void in the center. This contrast between the vibrancy of Francis’ color palette and the austere white picture plane demonstrate the artist’s concern with relationships of space, color, and light, as opposed to the psychologically expressive tendencies of contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock." (artsy.net)
"During the Second World War Sam Francis served as a pilot with the American armed forces. He took up painting while recovering from a flying accident in 1944. From 1950-7 he lived in Paris, where he saw first-hand the paintings of Monet, Matisse, Cézanne and Bonnard. In September 1956 he visited an exhibition of Monet's 'Water Lilies', paintings which had aroused his interest for some time and which had an impact on his work. For Francis each colour has a symbolic value: white corresponds to the infinite, blue to the cosmos and water, and yellow to the sun. His experience as a pilot has a bearing on his paintings..." (tate.org)
Portfolio Cover by Lichtenstein
One Cent Life Portfolio
The 1964 One Cent Life Portfolio was written by Walasse Ting, edited by Sam Francis, and published by E.W. Kornfeld. This ambitious project of loose limited edition color lithographs, beautifully incorporates American Pop and European Expressionism.
See Greg's collection of One Cent Life
The complete portfolio includes 62 original lithographs by Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Enrico Baj, Alan Davie, Jim Dine, Sam Francis, Robert Indiana, Asger Jorn, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Mitchell, Claes Oldenburg, Mel Ramos, Robert Rauschenberg, Jean-Paul Riopelle, James Rosenquist, Antonio Saura, Bram Van Velde, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann and other American and European POP artists.
"It very quickly became the manifesto of a new generation of painters and the expression of the new pictorial research that they were engaged in….” (Gemini Fine Books & Arts, Ltd.)