AMSTELVEEN, NETHERLANDS.- It has been 10 years since Sam Francis has passed away. The Museum Jan van der Togt is organizing an exhibition this year to honor this great American Artist. Remembering; Sam Francis, from 8th November 2004 - 9th January 2005. A full color exhibition catalogue will be available from the 1st of November 2004.

Sam Francis was a citizen of the world who lived for art. American by birth, he has spend a large part of his live in Europe (Paris and Bern), Tokio and New York. Some of his paintings have been partly created in Paris, worked on in New York, and finally completed in Tokyo. With this cosmopolitan attitude to life Sam Francis has evolved his unique style of art.

The career of the American artist Sam Francis embraces some fifty years of art history. Sam Francis was averse to all trends. He consciously and obstinately ignored these trends in order to follow his own personal path. Creativity and tireless dedication to his work result in a diverse expressive heritage consisting of paintings, drawings and graphics. His Big Orange, Round the World and other artistic creations of his hand can be seen as true icons of our time. Martha Jackson, an art dealer at the time in New York, wrote in a letter to Sam Francis in 1954;"..And what do I think of you? Only that you are one of the great painters of our time.." Time magazine reviewed Sam Francis in 1956 as;" the hottest American painter in Paris these days." In the early 1950s exhibitions were held at famous displays in Europe as the Famous Rive Droite in Paris, France. Sam Francis was taken under the wings of New Yorker art dealer Martha Jackson in the year 1956. The support and devotion of Martha Jackson towards the artistic career of Sam Francis will lead into the Twelve Americans Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in NY and later The New American Painting where 17 artists including Pollock and Mark Rothko demonstrated the artistic freedom of expressive artists. This exhibition toured Europe in 1958. Sam Francis was now one of the renowned promising new American artists like Pollock and Rothko. Sam Francis will stay in Paris for the duration of 8 years from where he starts his first trip around the world in 1957; a second one will follow in 1959. When he arrives in Japan he immediately feels at home, this feeling will bring him back to Japan, Tokyo, many more times. In 1962 Sam Francis returns to California where he moves into the former house off Charlie Chaplin at West Channel Road in Santa Monica. He also keeps working in his foreign studio's in Bern, New York, Paris and Tokio. "Los Angeles is the best for light in my work. New York light is hard. Paris light is beautiful cerulean gray. But Los Angeles light is clear and bright even in haze."

The combination of the influences Sam Francis experienced as the magnificent use of color of the French impressionist artists and the introduction to the Asian art, the sense of form and the power of the white field, make the work of Sam Francis universal. To experience a work of Sam Francis is a purely visual feast; an abstract game of light, shadow, movement and color. Sam Francis is undoubtedly one of the greatest abstract artists of this century.