1944 was a pivotal year in the life of Sam Francis. As an airman in the army, he was involved in a serious plane crash in the California desert. Hospitalized for two years and unable to move, Sam Francis looked for a way to escape. He discovered painting, and began to paint clouds, the sky, the stars and infinite space... “My painting came from illness. My painting came from illness. I left the hospital through my painting. I was suffering in my body [...] and it was because I was able to paint that I was able to heal myself.”
After leaving hospital, Sam Francis studied art at UC Berkeley. He admired the work of his teacher Clyfford Still, one of the leading figures of the first generation of American Abstract Expressionists, and at the same time discovered the works of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem De Kooning. This artistic encounter was a revelation and gave him the artistic “justification” to pursue his own abstract research. 

Jackson POLLOCK (1912-1956)                                
Shimmering Substance, C. 1946                                   
Oil on canvas     
Museum of Modern Art, New York  

Claude MONET (1840-1926)
Nympheas, (1914-1920) - Partial view of the 8 compositions 
Oil on panel
Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris 

In 1948, Sam Francis left his native California for France, settling in Paris until 1960. There he discovered Monet's Water Lilies and the works of Matisse and Bonnard. “French painting full of light and color, light-space-color”, he would later say, ‘I did late Monet in a pure form’. He admired the colors of the Nympheas, which seemed to be constantly changing. This influence, both American and French, is a source of inspiration that guides him in his pictorial research. Sam Francis incorporates elements of Abstract Expressionism and Impressionism to create a unique style of pictorial Abstraction. He develops an aesthetic whose subject is the paint itself, the stain and the color.