New Talent

The hottest American painter in Paris these days is a 32-year-old Californian named Sam Francis, a husky ex-GI., who in the past five years has caused even palette-jaded Parisians to perk up. He has won raves for shows on both banks of the Seine, and Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, currently showing a Sam Francis painting among its new acquisitions, calls him "perhaps the best-known young American painter now working in Europe." Last week Sam Francis racked up another triumph. Museum Director Arnold Rudlinger of Basel's Kunsthalle, acting for a group of Swiss art collectors, plunked down 1,000,000 French francs ($2,857) for Francis' latest abstract oil, a huge, 10 ft.-by-14 ft. canvas of swirling black forms, beneath which glow splotches of hot reds and yellows (see cut).

Intoxicated by Light. Sam Francis' ambitious specialty is nothing less than exploring the quality of light itself. "Not just the play of light and shadow," he adds, "but the substance of which light is made. I'm intoxicated by light."

The idea first struck him when he landed in a U.S. Army hospital during World War II, following a spinal injury during flight training. Flat on his back in the hospital, he took up drawing and painting; the play of light on the ceiling became one of his favorite themes. Invalided out of the Army, he gravitated into the orbit of San Francisco's abstract-expressionist movement, headed by Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and David Park. Among Francis' student contemporaries: John Hultberg, 33, first prizewinner in last year's Corcoran Biennial (TIME, May 2 et seq.), and Lawrence Calcagno, 39 (TIME, Oct. 17).

Molecules of Color. Francis moved on to Paris in 1950 and set to work atomizing the structure of light. In most of Francis' canvases the results, brushed in with broad strokes (he uses a 4-in. brush), look like a jostling torrent of molecules of color. The effect Francis wants is to make his paintings "a source of light. When I paint I try to create the feeling of being in it." In Francis' latest work, even black paint rates as light. Francis sees no contradiction, points out that his black is "intense, glossy and luminous. It creates a feeling of being a source of light." Kunsthalle Director Rudlinger came to Francis' barnlike studio-apartment over a Left Bank neon-light factory, took one look and agreed. Said he: "If you're crazy enough to paint something like that, I'm crazy enough to buy it."

With his million franc windfall, Francis plans to finance a new studio and a trip to the U.S. And as his canvases get bigger and bigger, he is also intrigued by the thought of another project: "I'd like to buy one of those flying platforms they've just designed. Gosh, with one of those you could hover any place you wanted, and you could make 40-ft. brush strokes."

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