Sam Francis (1923 - 1994 ), a renowned American painter, is famous for his lyrical abstract artworks. Primarily associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement after World War II, Francis is recognized for his large, spontaneous, and overall compositions saturated with colors.

Born in San Mateo, California, in 1923, Sam Francis embarked on an artistic career after a period of convalescence due to vertebral tuberculosis, contracted during a training crash in the Arizona desert while serving in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. "Painting became a means of returning to life for me," said Sam Francis.

He studied art at various institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley, the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), and the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in New York. A master of Abstract Expressionism, an art movement emerging in the 1940s and 1950s in the United States, Francis developed a distinct style often compared to that of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

In 1950, Sam Francis moved to Paris, where he would spend the majority of the following decade. Initially, his works were monochromatic abstractions, but after exposure to post-impressionist painters such as Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse, he began creating paintings with bold color combinations, initially in red, yellow, and blue.

Selected for the historic Twelve Americans exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1956, Francis remained faithful to abstraction, using a vivid palette and a remarkable variety of drips and splatters. Among his most famous works are the 'Blue Balls' paintings from the early 1960s, characterized by embryonic clusters of blue on a white background, and the 'Edge' paintings from the mid-1960s, where most of the canvas was left blank, with only the edges being painted. He also created several effervescent canvases in the 1970s and 1980s with a grid format.

Towards the end of his life, Sam Francis returned to California, becoming a passionate printmaker and opening his own printmaking studio in Santa Monica called the Litho Shop. He led a tumultuous life, marked by frequent travels to France and Japan, where he spent a significant part of his time. Despite persistent health issues, he continued painting until his death in 1994.

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