(b San Mateo, CA, 1923;d Santa Monica, CA, 1994) American Painter and Printmaker. Sam Francis began to paint after a plane crash and illness hospitalized him. He completed his BA (1949) and MA (1950) at the University of California at Berkeley.

During this period, Surrealism and the Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and particularly Clyfford Still influenced Francis. In 1956, he was featured in the “12 Americans” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Besides his work on canvas, Francis painted several murals for major institutions and established The Litho Shop to create his own prints.

Francis died due to complications of cancer in 1994. (Biographical information courtesy of the Sam Francis Foundation)

Sam Francis heavily featured canvas panels in his authoritative publication, Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings 1946–1994. Edited by Debra Burchett-Lere and published by the University of California Press, this comprehensive text documents his extensive work across both traditional canvases and rigid board supports. Throughout his career, Francis utilized acrylic mediums on panels in distinct ways: • Acrylic on Paper Mounted on Panel: Early in his career, Francis frequently executed fluid, gestural acrylic and mixed media compositions on canvas panels, and on fine art paper, which was then mounted directly onto rigid wood or composite panels for stability and structural presentation. • Shaped Canvas Mounted on Panel: During the 1980s, Francis experimented with form, creating circular, tondo, or uniquely geometric shaped canvases. These painted canvases were structurally reinforced by mounting them flush against a wooden panel support. • Vibrant Color Fields: The rigid nature of wood panels allowed him to aggressively apply his signature thinned acrylic washes, splatters, and controlled drips without the canvas sagging, preserving the stark relationship between heavy color pools and empty white voids.

Sam Francis 1963 Acrylic on Canvasboard