Sam Francis

Untitled (SF-106A)

1969

The final print of Sam Francis. L’étoile (SF-364) 1995. Museum glass anti-reflective. Artwork size : 127 x 78,5 cm Frame size : 147x98x4 cm Edition 6/50 artist blindstamp signature. Stamped by the Publisher. Artist's Proofs: 8 ex. Sam Francis Archive Number: SF-364. Free shipment worldwide. Publisher: The Litho Shop, Santa Monica. Sam Francis’s paintings are a journey into a dream, a voyage into the landscapes of the soul where colours are lights on fire. Alongside names such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, Sam Francis is an artist who has succeeded in demonstrating a total mastery of abstract expressionism’s impassioned and spontaneous genre. The explosions of colour – red, blue, green and yellow – the streaks, strokes and bold lines of his pictures are the physical synthesis of the deepest crevices of the soul. His colours create rhythmical motifs that, characteristically enough, can be called the “musicality” of his paintings. The work of Sam Francis provides a visible meeting place for the conscious and the unconscious. His pictures are the cross-fertilisation of what has already been experienced with what exists still only as desire, a struggle between melancholy and merrymaking. Influenced by C.G. Jung, the father of psychoanalysis, Sam Francis spent a large portion of his life exploring the premise that dreams, instincts and intuition provide, the keys which unlock the mysteries and meaning of our inner lives. He was also fascinated by the four ancient elements – earth, water, air and fire – which developed into a leitmotif in his work. Sam Francis was born in San Mateo in California, USA in 1923. After starting to paint at the age of around twenty, he soon found himself increasingly consumed by the power of art. He spent much of the 1950s in Paris, from where he not only made frequent excursions to a number of European cities, but also embarked on many journeys to South America and Asia. He continued to move from place to place, primarily in the USA and Japan, right up until his death in 1994. Sam Francis’s first...

Publisher GKM. Edition of 40 ex. Unframed. Carborundum engraving. Moulin de Larroque handmade paper. Free shipment worldwide. “With just a few strokes of his brush he conjures up an entire world. James Coignard extends the boundaries between concrete and abstract. He knows how to create chromatic melodies that shift in timbre from cobalt blue to blood red. His pictures are an artistic epicentre where lines, letters and numbers meld with vigorous swashes of colour.” That is how the writer Johan Persson has described the artist’s paintings. With this exhibition we honour James Coignard, showing some of his last carborundum engravings and paintings as well as presenting the book “L’œuvre gravé de James Coignard” volume VI. In this edition, we have gathered together all the engravings that James Coignard produced between June 2005 and his decease, on 7 March 2008. Behind him he left many fond memories and a life’s work as a great artist. James Coignard’s principal modes of expression were oil on canvas and gravure au carborundum, but also in bronze and glass sculptures as well as in ceramics. His work has been shown on more than 400 exhibitions, primarily in Central Europe and Scandinavia, but also in Canada and the USA. His first Swedish exhibition was at Malmö Museum in 1956. The early 1970s saw the start of a long-term liaison with Galleri Östermalm in Stockholm, owned by Editions Sonet. They came to represent him in Scandinavia and edited several volumes of his graphic works. It was not until 2003 that we at Galleri GKM Siwert Bergström...

Sam Francis Untitled 1988 Lithograph, Edition of 48 113.3 x 74.3 cms (44.6 x 29.3 ins) SF17882

67.3 x 49.5 cms (26 1/2 x 19 1/2 ins) Edition of 7