Sulfur Water

Sam Francis

Beginning in the 1960s, Sam Francis developed his personal form of spontaneous and gestural drippings and Sulfur Water is a fine example. He created a “frame” of colorful forms that would draw the viewer's eye toward a white central shape seemly splashed with colors that flit over the surface. Despite the spontaneous, painterly look of this lithograph, Joe Funk printed three colors, blue, red, and lemon yellow, in three runs from three stones.

Sam Francis moved to Santa Monica, California in 1962 and that same year he won the Grand Prize at the Third International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo. His star kept ascending and his work was included in numerous international exhibitions and, in 1967, his first major retrospective was held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

In 1970 he founded the Litho Shop, Inc. in Santa Monica for production of his own editions and the following year he made prints at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles. Francis created his first intaglio prints in 1973 and began making monotypes in 1975 with Garner Tullis at the Institute for Experimental Printmaking in San Francisco.