Untitled (SF71-1025), 1971
Details
Year: 1971
Sheet size: 28 x 20.25"
Image size: 28 x 20.25"
Framed size: 37 x 29.25"
Signature: signed 'Sam Francis, dated 'Feb 1971' and dedicated 'For Ishibashi Omedetou' verso
About the Work
"Untitled (SF71-1025)" is an acrylic on paper painting created by Sam Francis in 1971. The artwork is signed 'Sam Francis, dated 'Feb 1971' and dedicated 'For Ishibashi Omedetou' verso. The artwork ships framed in a custom closed-corner gold leaf frame and has a framed size of 37 x 29.25".
Sam Francis spent the early 1970s redefining his relationship to the white field that had long anchored his paintings. "Untitled (SF71-1025)" captures this pivotal shift: the once-protective margins rupture, sending vivid trajectories of color into the open center. Reds, greens, violets, oranges, and ultramarine blues preserve the edges as more fluid, diluted hues spread out into the center. 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 edges of the sheet. This interplay of saturated corners and paler internal hues infuses the work with a spatial rhythm that feels both measured and organic.
By 1971, Francis—already celebrated in Paris, Tokyo, and Los Angeles—had begun probing Jungian psychology to map the subconscious in paint. Works on paper from this moment mark a departure from the strict “Edge” compositions of the late 1960s toward a more exploratory geometry that embraces flux. "Untitled (SF71-1025)" stands at that threshold, balancing disciplined structure with the spontaneity of liquid acrylic.
The painting’s untouched center remains a locus of reflection, an inner stillness, while the encroaching bands of color suggest new forces, new roads of thought. Each intersecting path offers an alternate journey through the psyche, echoing Francis’s belief that the subconscious holds multiple, simultaneous possibilities. The harmony struck between bright assertion and contemplative white embodies the artist’s search for peace amid encroaching chaos.
"Untitled (SF71-1025)" is more than an arresting field of color; it is a record of an artist mid-transition, testing boundaries, inviting movement, and turning the white plane into a stage for reflection. For the discerning collector, it offers a chance to own a decisive fragment of Sam Francis’s continual reinvention, where disciplined line meets liberated color in perfect, luminous tension.
About the Artist
Untitled (SF71-1025), 1971
MORE FROM THIS ARTIST
Untitled (SFE-015, I.48), 1984
327 - Untitled (SFM 86-239), 1986
324 - Untitled (SF-271, L.265), 1986
306 - Untitled (SF-310, L.236), 1979
Concert Hall Set II (SF-231, L.224), 1977
290 - Untitled (SFM 80-016), 1980
310 - Untitled (SF73-157), 1973
Untitled (SF77-092), 1977
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