SAM FRANCIS: The Psychology of Color

Sam Francis remains a celebrated enigma for art historians because he was an unparalleled bridge maker between ostensibly incongruent movements and a synthesizer of polar philosophies. His works unify the extremes of Abstract Expressionism, combining the Color Field Painting championed by Mark Rothko and the Action Painting of Jackson Pollock, but levitating the mood of his own works far away from those two brooding camps through the use of open space and saturated luminescent color.