Live Auction 11798Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Auction
SAM FRANCIS (1923-1994)
Lot 179 50 YEARS OF CONNOISSEURSHIP – PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION

SAM FRANCIS (1923-1994)

Untitled No. 5

Closed30 June 2016

Price Realised

GBP 218,500

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SAM FRANCIS (1923-1994)
Untitled No. 5
signed and dated ‘Sam Francis 73’ (on the reverse)
acrylic and oil on canvas
43 7/8 x 65 ¾in. (111.3 x 167cm.)
Painted in 1973

André Emmerich Gallery, New York.
Private Collection, London (acquired from the above in 1973).
Anon. sale, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, 8 November 1979, lot 859.
Hokin Gallery Inc., Bay Harbor Islands.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1980.

Specialist note

‘Sam Francis made a life’s work of scattering leaves of colour, creating an elegant balance by messing things up, and it is his preference for incompleteness over purity that gives his paintings distinctive beauty and power. A restless curiosity and an appetite for visual pleasure fuelled his vision, and it was one that avoided the solemnity and absoluteness that characterized much twentieth-century abstraction’
(C. Burnett, Sam Francis: 1923-1994, London, 2003, unpaged).