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The first in-depth biography of Sam Francis, the legendary American abstract painter who broke all the rules in his personal and artistic life.Light on Fire is the first comprehensive biography of Sam Francis, one of the most important American abstract artists of the twentieth century. Based on Gabrielle Selz’s unprecedented access to Francis’s files, as well as private correspondence and hundreds of interviews, this book traces the extraordinary and ultimately tragic journey of a complex and charismatic artist who first learned to paint as a former air-corps pilot encased for three years in a full-body cast. While still a young man, Francis saw his color-saturated paintings fetch the highest prices of any living artist. His restless desire resulted in five marriages and homes on three continents; his entrepreneurial spirit led to founding a museum, a publishing company, a reforestation program and several nonprofits. Light on Fire captures the art, life, personality, and talent of a man whom the art historian and museum director William C. Agee described as a rare artist participating in the “visionary reconstruction of art history,” defying creative boundaries among the likes of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. With settings from World War II San Francisco to postwar Paris, New York, Tokyo, and Los Angeles, Selz crafts an intimate portrait of a man who sought to resolve in art the contradictions he couldn’t resolve in life.
Gabrielle Selz is the award-winning author of Unstill Life: A Daughter’s Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction. Her articles have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.
Acknowledgments IntroductionPart I 1923–1950Color is light on fire1. Traumatic Beginnings2. First Love, First Muse3. An Unexpected Battle4. The Keys to the Kingdom5. A First CoalescencePart II 1950–1956Paris was the psychic mother of me6. A Tiny Room at the Hôtel de Seine7. Ambition and Lies8. I Paint Time9. A Homecoming of Joy and AnguishPart III 1956–1962Go as far as you can as fast as you can10. Wanderlust11. Feverish Intensity 12. An Internationalist in New York 13. I Am a Seismograph 14. A Dance with Mr. DeathPart IV 1962–1985I am your change-bearer, I am your instrument of expansion15. Resurrection 16. I Love My Desires 17. The Space at the Center Is Reserved for You18. The Artist Is His Work and No Longer Human19. My Consciousness Is an Image20. Art Is the Heart of the Matter21. A New Era for Los Angeles22. My Virtue Is to Be MyselfPart V 1986–1994I am steering by the torch of chaos and doubt23. Don't Be Sorry for Nothing 24. Death Is a Curve in Harmony with LifeEpilogueNotes on SourcesIllustration CreditsIndex
"Quality research supplies a dramatis personae that's a hit list of 20th-century art giants. . . . An engaging read, avoiding hagiography. This biography of a mercurial rogue has something to amuse or annoy most aficionados."
