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Indepth Arts News:
"SAM FRANCIS: PAINTINGS 1947-1990"
1999-09-10 until 2000-01-02
Menil Collection
Houston, TX,
USA United States of America
A major retrospective featuring the work of this internationally acclaimed
American abstract painter, tracing the course of his long and productive career.
Beginning with his early works from the late 1940s (portraits, landscapes,
seascapes) to the last abstractions completed in 1990, the exhibition includes
approximately 60 paintings and 30 drawings and provides a rare opportunity to see
his early work. Francis, a California native, is widely regarded as one of the
most important representatives of Abstract Expressionism. Organized by The Museum
of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, SAM FRANCIS: PAINTINGS 1947-1990 is curated
by William C. Agee, professor of art history at Hunter College. While Francis‚s
art was first associated in the public mind with the New York School, writes
Agee in the exhibition catalog, it never bore the immediate marks of rawness and
existentialist angst that characterized much of early gestural abstraction.
From the beginning, Francis‚s work related to the organic forms of Clyfford Still
and the atmospheric color veils of Mark Rothko, two artists well represented in
the Menil Collection.
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