Blue, red and yellow
1964

• Sam FRANCIS

In 1950, when most of America’s aspiring abstract artists were flocking to New York, young Californian painter Sam Francis moved to Paris on the ‘GI Bill’, an allowance that financed further education for World War II veterans. He quickly found himself at the heart of the Parisian avantgarde, although he denied affiliation with any particular artistic group or movement. In the earliest paintings of his Paris period, Francis restricted his palette to soft greys and white. His deepening attraction to the work of the great French colourists Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard, and exposure to the late works of Claude Monet, saw the introduction of evocative ‘all-over’ surfaces composed of layers of vibrant, primary colours, as can be seen in Blue, red and yellow.