Slant (SF70-138), 1970

Name: Slant (SF70-138), 1970
Brand: Sam Francis
Availability: InStock

Sam Francis

Medium: acrylic on paper

Signature: signed 'Sam Francis' and dated on verso

Framed size: 52 x 40.25"

Price on Request

15513581

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"Slant (SF70-138)" is an acrylic on paper painting created by Sam Francis in 1970. The artwork is signed 'Sam Francis' and dated on verso. The artwork ships framed in a light colored contemporary frame and has a framed size of 52 x 40.25".

In "Slant (SF70-138)," created in 1970, Sam Francis constructs a luminous, structured field of intersecting color and space, a work that bridges the artist’s earlier “Edge” paintings with his increasingly fluid, gestural compositions of the 1970s. Carefully balanced yet visually charged, this acrylic on paper artwork reflects a pivotal moment in Francis’s evolution, as he moved from working around absence to activating the entire surface of the paper through color, movement, and subtle psychological geometry.

By 1970, Francis had begun to move away from the pure white voids and tight framing devices of the late 1960s, instead experimenting with compositional openness, layered gesture, and vibrant, shifting pathways. "Slant (SF70-138)" exemplifies this transition. Wet lines of both bright and dark hues crisscross the mostly white plane, forming loose geometries that create pockets of negative space, a map of converging possibilities. These lines are not static: they drip, bleed, and dilute, creating areas of soft transparency that contrast with concentrated pools of pigment, particularly at the boundaries of the sheet. This interplay of saturated edges and paler internal hues infuses the work with a spatial rhythm that feels both measured and organic. Though the composition may appear structured, it is anything but rigid. The directional slants and pathways suggest movement through thought, a visual metaphor for the subconscious.

"Slant (SF70-138)" is a refined and resonant example of Sam Francis’s shift toward a more liberated and psychologically charged abstraction. It is a painting of pathways, not just of color and line, but of thought and possibility.

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Details

Medium: acrylic on paper
Year: 1970

Image size: 43.5 x 31.25"
Framed size: 52 x 40.25"

Signature: signed 'Sam Francis' and dated on verso

Reference:

SF70-138

Exhibited:

Tokyo, Idemitsu Art Gallery, Paintings by Sam Francis in the Idemitsu Collection, 8 January - 10 February 1974; catalogue, no. 23, illustrated
Toyama, Museum of Modern Art; Chiba, Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art; Ehime, Museum of Art Ehime; Tokyo, Museum of Contemporary Art; Fukushima, Iwaki City Art Museum; Oita, Oita City Art Museum, Sam Francis: From the Idemitsu Collection, 10 August - 26 October 2003; catalogue, p.64, no. 40, illustrated in colour

About the Work

About the Artist

Sam Francis (1923 – 1994), internationally celebrated for his radiant use of color and light, stands as one of the great figures of postwar abstraction. His bold canvases, rooted in Abstract Expressionism yet enriched by global influences from Paris to Tokyo, speak directly to today’s collectors seeking works that transcend boundaries of place and time. Francis’s paintings and works on paper are represented in the world’s leading museums, including MoMA (New York), Tate (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), LACMA (Los Angeles), and SFMOMA. His market remains exceptionally strong, underscored by recent record-breaking sales and renewed curatorial attention, such as LACMA’s 2023 exhibition Sam Francis and Japan: Emptiness Overflowing. With their luminous expanses of white and bursts of vivid blues, reds, and golds, Francis’s works feel startlingly contemporary, anchoring him as a cornerstone of 20th-century art whose vision remains vital in the 21st-century market.

Slant (SF70-138), 1970

$225,000.00

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