Presenting a sumptuous vista of saturated and luminous hue, Deep Blue, Yellow, Red from 1956 is an unequivocal masterpiece from the breathtaking pinnacle of Sam Francis’s celebrated painterly oeuvre. Long considered to be the ultimate examples of Francis’s distinctive and highly praised abstract aesthetic, the paintings he created in the second half of the 1950s stand as test.mes nt to a young artist’s fervent pursuit of a revolutionary style; indeed, in the churning dynamism, dazzling vibrancy, and edge-to-edge expression of Deep Blue, Yellow, Red, we bear witness to a newly established genius at the very moment Francis develops the groundbreaking coloration and pioneering abstraction that mark his most iconic masterpieces. Among the first fully mature and sublime masterworks of his oeuvre, the title of the present work is perhaps best expressed in the words of scholar William C. Agee, as described in the definitive text for the artist’s catalogue raisonné: “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 in Debra Burchett-Lere, Ed., Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings 1946-1994, Berkeley, 2011, pp. 12-13) Achieving a veritable explosion of chromatic vibrancy, there is indeed a tangible charge to Francis’s kaleidoscopic canvas; flowing from the farthest edges of the pictorial plane, the fluid yet distinct bodies of saturated blue, yellow, and red appear anything but static as they undulate with an ethereal weightlessness before the viewer’s transfixed gaze.

Executed in 1956, Deep Blue, Yellow, Red marks a pivotal moment of artistic development within Francis’s celebrated career. Although his art historical legacy is most often considered in conjunction with his contemporaries at the forefront of the New York School, the true catalyst for his aesthetic development lies in his fusion of American Abstract Expressionism with the influence of European Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, which Francis encountered during his years living in Europe. Born and raised in California, Francis moved to Paris in 1950, where he attended the Atelier Fernand Léger; upon arriving in France, he was exposed to the work of such painters as Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Claude Monet, artists likewise renowned for their treatment and mastery of color and light. One of the artist’s early champions, Arnold Rüdlinger, described this aesthetic relationship when he wrote, “Right or wrong, Sam Francis’ works remind the European of Monet’s late period. Let there be no mistake – it is not the semblance of colors and the atmosphere that justifies this comparison with Monet, but the miracle that, from an abstract conception, bursts forth the image of a lyrical pantheism to which Monet and Bonnard arrived at by means of the figurative, with Francis continuously transposing it and casting a spell over it” (Arnold Rüdlinger in Exh. Cat., Paris, Centre Culturel Américain, Sam Francis, Shirley Jaffe, Kimber Smith, 1958, n.p.) Achieving an extraordinary edge-to-edge effusion of color and form, Deep Blue, Yellow, Red is notably evocative of the bold yet nuanced celebration of chromatic possibility evidenced in the canvases of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cézanne, whose work also served a crucial inspiration for the artist during this formative period; much like those painters, Francis surprises the viewer with unexpected splashes of electric yellow and incendiary crimson, shimmering from amidst a sea of rippling cobalt hue. Francis’s monochrome veils of honey-comb color and all-over compositions are especially indebted to the Fauvist master Henri Matisse. Indeed, foremost among Francis’s influences is Matisse, whose flattening of perspective, abstracting of form, and joyous celebration of color deeply influenced Francis. In the present work Francis evokes the expressionistic, saturated hues of blue, red, and yellow in Matisse’s Window at Tangier, further abstracting Matisse’s interior window in a contemporary vernacular. Francis’s compelling abstraction reaches across not only continents, but also coasts: exemplified in the present work, his unique style offers an extraordinary fusion of American abstraction in the critical post-war period, when the landscape of painting was being actively and aggressively recalibrated by visionary artists both in New York and, across the country, in Francis’s hometown of San Francisco.

The period between 1947 and 1950 was especially fruitful in the Bay Area, as several influential visual artists, professors, and curators converged on the area, central among them being Clyfford Still, Ad Reinhardt, and Mark Rothko. Still and Rothko taught together at the California School of Replica Handbags s – where Richard Diebenkorn studied – Still from 1946 through 1950 and Rothko in the summers of 1947 and 1949. Francis was shaped first and foremost by their example, being particularly drawn to the organic forms, tonal experimentation, and vast scale of Still, tempered by ephemeral sublimity and sumptuous, edge-to-edge saturation of Rothko’s towering abstract masterpieces. Within Deep Blue, Yellow, Red, we see Francis deftly invoke and unite these disparate influences, embracing the direct, immediate handling of materials and unfettered freedom of process mandated by Still, yet infused with Rothko’s appreciation of liquidity and fluency between forms, colors, and shapes. As evidenced by the unique power of the present work, however, Francis ultimately takes these stylistic models a step further, conferring upon Deep Blue, Yellow, Red an emotional charge that is entirely his own.

At its most transcendent, Francis’s art is a celebration of color as the ultimate expression of the sublime; as described by the artist himself, and brilliantly demonstrated in the bewitching and beautiful Deep Blue, Yellow, Red, “What we want to make is something that fills utterly the sight, and can't be used to make life only bearable; if the painting till now was a way of making bearable the sight of the unbearable, the visual sumptuous, then let's now strip away... all that." (Sam Francis in a letter to Museum of Modern Art curator Dorothy Miller in 1957) Used with exhilarating freedom and to unparalleled effect in Deep Blue, Yellow, Red, the dazzling cerulean that dominates the present work is perhaps the single most identifiable and characteristic color in Francis’s vast pantheon of vivid pigments, and has become, in its pervasive usage, almost synonymous with his legacy. The artist described this particular hue as the “Mother liquid, matrix,” and its ubiquitous use during this period recalls Rothko’s autographic red or Franz Kline’s distinctive monochrome palette (Sam Francis, Saturated Blue: Writings from the Notebooks, Santa Monica, 1995, n.p.) While Francis’s favored cobalt remained at the forefront of his palette throughout his career, the uninhibited intensity of the color within paintings such as Deep Blue, Yellow, Red remains unparalleled.

Throughout a career that spanned almost half a century and across the world, Francis charted his own course through the landscape of Abstract Expressionism, creating a corpus that is at once a synthesis of diverse inspirations and a deeply personal endeavor toward self-discovery. Within the captivating effusion of light, form, and hue that is Deep Blue, Yellow, Red, Francis draws the viewer into a spatial system all his own, pushing beyond that which has been done to explore newfound realms of saturated sublimity. To Francis, color held an unmatched inherent value and true symbolic meaning: in the artist’s own words, “color is light on fire” (Pontus Hulten, Sam Francis, Bonn, 1993, p. 38) Powerfully evocative of this simple stat.mes nt, Deep Blue, Yellow, Red is an unequivocal masterwork from the formative moment of Francis’s celebrated career and the ultimate expression of his aesthetic vernacular: a luminous vessel of pure color and light.

Artist

Sam Francis