Sam Francis: Five Decades of Abstract Expressionism from California Collections

JANUARY 26 – APRIL 20, 2014

This exhibition celebrates internationally acclaimed California native Sam Francis, one of the state's most historically significant artists. Featuring a colorful range of the artist's paintings and unique works on paper, this survey highlights different periods of the artist's oeuvre as represented in extraordinary public and private California collections, starting from the early works that the artist made in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1940s leading up to the artist's influential and expansive body of work created between the 1950s and the 1990s. Represented are works made in the artist's California studios in Palo Alto, Point Reyes, Santa Monica, and Venice, as well as those made when Francis was living in New York, Switzerland, and Japan. The exhibition is organized by the Sam Francis Foundation in collaboration with the Pasadena Museum of California Art and the Crocker Art Museum.

Image credit: Sam Francis, Untitled, 1980. Acrylic on canvas, 54 x 142 in. The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection. Artwork © Sam Francis Foundation, California/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.