(San Mateo/CA 1923–1994 Santa Monica/CA)
Blue Ball, 1960 (SF), signed and dated
Sam Francis 1960 on the reverse,
watercolour on paper, 68 x 82 cm, framed

This work is identified with the interim identification number of SF60–1390 in consideration for the forthcoming Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Unique Works on Paper.

This information is subject to change as scholarship continues
by the Sam Francis Foundation.

Provenance:
Private Collection, California (1982) - gift of the artist
Private Collection, California (2009)
Private Collection, Spain (November 2013)

From 1960 until 1963, during Francis’ days as a resident of Paris, his art underwent a number of apparently radical shifts. He worked solely with blue, the colour that had long fascinated him. Francis’ best-known works of this time are the Blue Balls series, (…) in the remarkable watercolours of the series, in which shapes fill the surface, we find an intensity of flat, unmodulated blue that is surely among Francis’ strongest concentrations of a single colour, one more way in which he “made the late Monet pure”.

William C. Agee, Sam Francis Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings, pp. 93-94