Untitled, 1970 by Sam Francis detail corner

Untitled, 1970 by Sam Francis signature verso

Untitled, 1970

Name: Untitled, 1970
Brand: Sam Francis
Availability: InStock

Sam Francis

Medium: acrylic on paper

Signature: signed, inscribed and dated 'Sam Francis Tokyo 1970' on verso

Framed size: 32 x 40.5"

Price on Request

15513581

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"Untitled, 1970" is an acrylic on paper painting created by Sam Francis in 1970. The painting is signed, inscribed and dated 'Sam Francis Tokyo 1970' on verso. The artwork ships framed in a custom closed-corner gold leaf frame and has a framed size of 32 x 40.5".

Executed in Tokyo in 1970, this luminous acrylic on paper by Sam Francis embodies the artist’s mastery of color, gesture, and spatial tension. Inscribed on the reverse “Sam Francis Tokyo 1970,” the work belongs to a pivotal international period when his painting became increasingly meditative and attuned to non-Western concepts of space.

Sam Francis remains one of the most significant American painters of the postwar era. Though often associated with Abstract Expressionism, he forged an independent path centered on color as energy and space as a living presence. By 1970, having worked extensively in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, Francis had absorbed diverse cultural influences. His time in Japan proved especially formative, deepening his engagement with ideas such as ma, the expressive power of negative space, and mu, the concept of nothingness as potential.

Horizontally oriented, the composition is framed by radiant splashes of rainbow color that gather along the edges of the sheet. These chromatic bursts form an irregular border that energizes the white field within. A deliberate opening in the lower left interrupts the frame, creating a sense of pause and breath. This asymmetry activates the composition and underscores Francis’s sensitivity to balance and tension.

Across the central white expanse, three painterly bands traverse the surface. One begins in a direct line before gently curving, while the other two move in more parallel trajectories toward the lower right. Hovering between drawing and gesture, these bands evoke calligraphic movement or natural forces such as wind or water. The white space is not passive background but an active field that amplifies the vibrancy of the color. The composition feels expansive yet intimate, structured yet fluid.

Works from Francis’s Tokyo period are highly regarded for their refinement and cross-cultural depth. “Untitled, 1970” reflects a moment of serene authority in his career, when gesture, color, and emptiness achieved a delicate equilibrium. The result is a meditation in light and movement, offering a distilled expression of Francis’s enduring pursuit of spatial and chromatic harmony.

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Details

Medium: acrylic on paper
Year: 1970

Sheet size: 23 x 31.5"
Image size: 23 x 31.5"
Framed size: 32 x 40.5"

Signature: signed, inscribed and dated 'Sam Francis Tokyo 1970' on verso

Exhibited:

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh Corporations Collect: Inaugural Exhibition of the Heinz Galleries Museum of Art Carnegie Institute, October 1975-January 1976, no. 60.

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.

Untitled, 1970

$225,000.00

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