Sam Francis

Americans in Paris | Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946–1962

Grey Art Museum, NYU

Following World War II, hundreds of artists from the United States flocked to the City of Light, which for centuries had been heralded as an artistic mecca and international cultural capital. “Americans in Paris” explores a vibrant community of expatriates who lived in France for a year or more during the period from 1946 to 1962.

While the U.S. art scene was dominated by the rise of Abstract Expressionism, Americans working in Paris experimented with a range of formal strategies and various approaches to both abstraction and figuration.

Showcased here are some 130 paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, textiles, and works on paper by nearly 70 artists, providing a fresh perspective on a creative ferment too often overshadowed by the contemporaneous ascendency of the New York art scene.

Debra Bricker Balken, Lynn Gumpert, curators

Travelling exhibition: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy: September 3, 2024–January 5, 2025; The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery: February 11 2025, –June 1, 2025

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Sam Francis, « In Lovely Blueness »

Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

Echoing Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, on September 12, 2023, the Musée de l’Orangerie presented Sam Francis’ very large-format In Lovely Blueness, on a three-year loan from the Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre de Création Industrielle, to which it had been donated in 1977 by the Scaler Foundation with contributions from Éric and Sylvie Boissonnas.

Sam Francis arrived in Paris in 1950 and stayed for a decade, during which time his work gained recognition. The format of this painting was inspired by Monet’s Water Lilies, which he discovered when the museum reopened in 1953. He titled the work In Lovely Blueness, recalling a poem by Hölderlin (In Lieblicher Bläue, 1823). Blue of the sky, as the poet wrote, blue of the ocean too, according to Sam Francis, this color reveals the lyricism of his view of the world.

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At the heart of Abstraction Works from the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art

Fondation Maeght

The exhibition at the Fondation Maeght will show works from the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art from the 2nd of July until the 20th of November 2022 and offers an immersion in the vibrant creation of the years 1945 to 1980.

Home to a collection of more than 13,000 works, Fondation Maeght is always keen and honoured to showcase other collections, some of which are rarely accessible to the public, as it has consistently done in the past. This summer, from 2 July to 20 November, it is unveiling some 120 works from the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art (Geneva) and offering a riveting immersion into abstraction from the 1950s to the 1980s.

In the wake of Second World War, as many European artists exiled in the United States headed back to France, Paris regained its status as a hotbed of creativity and a global cultural capital. Driven by a thirst for freedom and a craving to rethink painting in the post-war years, artists from all over the world returned to their studios, abandoned during the German occupation, and engaged in an era of creative effervescence, be it in the arts, literature or filmmaking. While the breakthroughs by the vanguards of the first half of the 20th century were an invaluable post-war stimulus, abstract art renewed itself from the most gestural expression to the interrogation of materials, mediums and techniques.

The Fondation Gandur pour l’Art’s outstanding collection displayed at Fondation Maeght reveals the variety of forms em- braced by abstraction during these creative years. Works by Hans Hartung, Martin Barré, Simon Hantaï or Pierre Soulag- es trace the evolution of non-figurative art over four decades. In a thematic and chronological layout, the exhibition invites the viewer to discover lyrical and gestural abstraction by Georges Mathieu, abstract expressionism by Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell, geometric abstraction by Victor Vasarely, kinetic works by Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely, through to the rethinking of painting by the Supports/Surfaces group. The 1980s ushered in an era of revitalized abstract art, building on the hectic experimentation of earlier years.

Guest curator: Yan Schubert, the Gandur Collection pour l’Art curato

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Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis

Gabrielle Selz

A revelatory and groundbreaking biography of Sam Francis, one of the 20th century’s most celebrated artists, and the American painter who brought the vocabulary of abstract expressionism to Paris. Drawing on exclusive interviews and private correspondence, Gabrielle Selz traces the extraordinary life of this complex and charismatic artist who first learned to paint as a former air-corps pilot encased for three years in a full-body cast. While still a young man, Francis saw his color-saturated paintings fetch the highest prices of any living artist. His restless desire resulted in five marriages and homes on three continents. His entrepreneurial spirit led to founding a museum, a publishing company, a reforestation program and several non-profits. With settings from World War II San Francisco to post-war Paris, New York, Tokyo and Los Angeles, Selz writes an intimate portrait of a man who sought to resolve in art the contradictions he couldn’t resolve in life.

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UNITED STATES OF ABSTRACTION

Musée d'arts de Nantes | Musée Fabre Montpellier

The exhibition United States of Abstraction. American Artists in France, 1946-1964 explores the intense presence of American artists and how they helped redefine abstract art in France at a time when the global geography of art was in upheaval. It is generally considered that Paris lost its status as the art capital of the world after the Second World War, in favour of New York. However, from the end of the war, many artists, musicians and writers came to study and create in France. The exhibition explores the intense presence of these American artists and how they helped redefine abstract art in France at a time when the global geography of art was being turned upside down.

The exhibition is made up of about a hundred works, paintings and sculptures, from public and private collections in Europe and the United States, and is accompanied by numerous documents that provide an insight into the period.

This exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Fabre Museum of Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole which will host it from 6 August to 31 October 2021.

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes – read more

Musée Fabre, Montpellier – read more