Sam Francis (1923-1994) was one of the most internationally acclaimed American painters of the postwar era, whose luminous abstractions bridged the New York School, the École de Paris, and postwar Japanese art. Born in San Mateo, California, Francis initially studied botany and medicine at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as a pilot in the United States Air Force during the Second World War. A catastrophic plane crash left him with severe injuries that confined him to a body cast for years of hospitalization, and it was during this long convalescence that he first turned seriously to painting.

Francis studied with David Park at Berkeley and completed his formal training at the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1950 he moved to Paris, an environment that shaped his mature painterly language decisively. There he formed lasting friendships with fellow American expatriates including Joan Mitchell and Norman Bluhm, worked briefly under Fernand Léger, and engaged deeply with the parallel currents of European gestural abstraction. In the years that followed, Francis divided his time between studios in Paris, Tokyo, Bern, Mexico City, and California, becoming one of the most genuinely international figures in postwar abstract painting.

Francis is best known for his large-scale, radiantly colored abstract paintings, in which brilliant dripped and poured passages of color are set against generous fields of white space that make luminosity itself the subject of the work. His major public commissions include monumental works for Chase Manhattan Bank and the international arrivals building at Kennedy Airport. He also founded the Litho Shop as a distinguished publisher of artists' prints. His paintings are held in every major museum, and he remains one of the defining figures of postwar American painting.