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Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis
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.
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.
- GenresArtBiography Memoir
392 pages, Hardcover
Published October 19, 2021
About the author
Gabrielle Selz
2 books11 followersGabrielle Selz is the award-winning author of Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis. Her debut book, Unstill Life: A Daughter’s Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction, received the best memoir of the year award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. It was listed as the best book of 2014 by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Gabrielle has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, More Magazine, The Rumpus, Los Angeles Times. Her fiction has appeared in Fiction Magazine, Her art criticism in Art Papers, Hyperallergic, and Newsday. She is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction and is a Moth Story Slam Winner.
She earned her BA in Art History from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her MA in Writing from City College in New York. She has held the position of Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Gabrielle is a member of the San-Francisco-based writing group North 24th Writers, whose members have published more than two dozen nonfiction books. She has an adult son and lives in Oakland, California.
Gabrielle has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, More Magazine, The Rumpus, Los Angeles Times. Her fiction has appeared in Fiction Magazine, Her art criticism in Art Papers, Hyperallergic, and Newsday. She is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction and is a Moth Story Slam Winner.
She earned her BA in Art History from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her MA in Writing from City College in New York. She has held the position of Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Gabrielle is a member of the San-Francisco-based writing group North 24th Writers, whose members have published more than two dozen nonfiction books. She has an adult son and lives in Oakland, California.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 20, 2021
There are art books, books about art, and then there are books about life which happen to be rooted in the art world. “Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis” is one of those rare books. Highly narrative, with intimate details and a page-turner quality, “Light on Fire” chronicles the life and art of the complicated, celebrated but perhaps not as well-known to some of us on the East Coast, Sam Francis. Written by the author of “Unstill Life” (an amazing memoir about growing up in the art world), Gabrielle Selz accessed a wealth of untapped material to reveal secrets behind the central myth Francis created about himself as an artist. A polymath and a personally polarizing figure, Francis’ trajectory was profoundly affected by pain and suffering, and Selz relays this with empathy and honesty. Sam Francis lived a vivid, excessive life from another era. He was married five times, owned homes and studios on three continents, seeded the vocabulary of Abstract Expression around the world, and was instrumental in putting Los Angeles on the map as a vital art center. His earning power set the template for today’s global, blockbuster artists. Selz deftly captures Francis’s extraordinary, unstoppable nature in this informative and highly entertaining biography.
November 4, 2021
"Sam was a virtuoso from the moment he started to paint - it was like turning on a faucet.''
Gabrielle Selz's biography of a California artist "Light on Fire - The Art and Life of Sam Francis,'' is a must-read.
My interview/review with Selz, for the Nob Hill Gazette, is linked below:
https://nobhillgazette.com/literature...
Gabrielle Selz's biography of a California artist "Light on Fire - The Art and Life of Sam Francis,'' is a must-read.
My interview/review with Selz, for the Nob Hill Gazette, is linked below:
https://nobhillgazette.com/literature...
November 5, 2021
Selz is a gorgeous writer --her lyrical, poetic voice is the perfect vehicle for describing Sam Francis's sumptious paintings. She has a way of making the art accessible. But as someone who doesn't closely follow the art world, what hooked me this book was Sam Francis's larger-than-life life. So much tragedy, drama, five marriages, multiple near-death experiences. Selz brings sharp insights and a novelist's gift for story-telling in relating this extraordinary life.
July 2, 2026
Confession. I have a nervous disposition reading biographies. I have realized that many times when I read about some artist, musician or writer that I admire, I become disappointed and disillusioned when I learn about that person. I have now come to avoid this genre of books. I guess I like the myth. Why bother with reality?
Imagine what I felt when an artist friend of mine, who I admire his art work passed on this bio on the American artist Sam Francis (1923 - 1994). He knows that I have been a fan of his work for decades, having seen his work often in museums and even used his art as examples when I taught watercolours. It was hard to say “no” to my friend.
https://www.moca.org/collection/work/...
Sam Francis was born in California, moved with his family to Newfoundland during the depression (his grandfather was Canadian). During the Second World War, Sam joined the Air Force planning to be a pilot and serve his country. Instead he got a spinal tuberculosis that had him in a cast and laid up for almost three years. During this time he self taught himself art, learning to paint like an inverted Frida Kahlo. When he recovered he married his school sweetheart Vera and lived in San Francisco, taking art classes.
In the late 1940s Paris was calling all artists, as the New York Art boom had yet to start. He went to Paris on a GI bill with another woman Muriel, not his wife. Art was calling; womanizing also called. In Paris he met other Americans as well as a Canadian artist, Jean-Paul Riopelle. They shared a studio, drank and met others ex-pats. Riopelle, despite being married with two children, fell in with Joan Mitchell. Sam painted, began showing and started to pull in some money. He married Muriel. Life was starting.
Then the ex-Pat artists started to return back to America and a host of galleries started pushing their art. A few folks like Jackson Pollock, Ad Rheinhart, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko started to make a big splash in the big Apple. Sam Francis had to return to New York so as not to miss the boat. They drank, smoked and chased women. Different city, same attitude. Then the money started to roll in.
Francis was restless. His paintings got bigger. He met a Japanese woman artist and got her pregnant. He was invited to Japan for a commission. The “family” lived in New York for awhile but Sam missed Paris. The three moved to Paris. He got a bigger studios, bigger commissions, bigger shows. With the action happening in America, the Europeans stepped up, namely in Basel. Sam made some very good friends with deep pockets. Sam and his art was sent around the world. His fame was growing.
However he wasn’t much of a family man so why not have an affair? Woman number four. Then he got sick again. The tuberculosis infected his testicles. How ironic? Abe moved back to California to recover, rebuild. This time he started to build a giant house and studio in Los Angeles county. A he recovered, Francis got heavily involved in printmaking. Smaller pieces that sold even faster.
Sam Francis was famous by 1964. A rich Japanese oil magnate was building a museum to house all the paintings he had collected over the years, and of course he invited Sam to Japan. Tokyo was hosting the Olympics and Francis tried to create a mural but time got away for him. What didn’t get away was the daughter of the oil magnate. And she was pregnant and her visa in America was running out. Now a scandal was arising for her very conservative father.
At two thirds through the book my image of Sam Francis broke. The man was a pathetically horrible womanizer. When one reads about a famous artist, one realizes that that drive becomes an obsession that takes over one’s life. For good or bad. We all like a good story. In this case, I just like good art, and maybe, just maybe, let’s skip the story.
A month later I did finish the book. His one big positive is helping to create the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. He got married again to a British woman but still had affairs. His children are spread around the globe. Sam died of cancer at 71 that he left unchecked and tried in vain on a variety of unproven “medical” cures. He was worried about his libido. Are you kidding me? He spent money like water and when he died in 1994, his estate was worth $79 million. The ex-wives fought over the estate. His children each received $400,000. Yup a rich man dies sadly and leaves a mess.
The book was commissioned by the Sam Francis estate. Now I don’t have a great view of Sam Francis but I still love his paintings. Now I just feel cheated. No more biographies, please.
Imagine what I felt when an artist friend of mine, who I admire his art work passed on this bio on the American artist Sam Francis (1923 - 1994). He knows that I have been a fan of his work for decades, having seen his work often in museums and even used his art as examples when I taught watercolours. It was hard to say “no” to my friend.
https://www.moca.org/collection/work/...
Sam Francis was born in California, moved with his family to Newfoundland during the depression (his grandfather was Canadian). During the Second World War, Sam joined the Air Force planning to be a pilot and serve his country. Instead he got a spinal tuberculosis that had him in a cast and laid up for almost three years. During this time he self taught himself art, learning to paint like an inverted Frida Kahlo. When he recovered he married his school sweetheart Vera and lived in San Francisco, taking art classes.
In the late 1940s Paris was calling all artists, as the New York Art boom had yet to start. He went to Paris on a GI bill with another woman Muriel, not his wife. Art was calling; womanizing also called. In Paris he met other Americans as well as a Canadian artist, Jean-Paul Riopelle. They shared a studio, drank and met others ex-pats. Riopelle, despite being married with two children, fell in with Joan Mitchell. Sam painted, began showing and started to pull in some money. He married Muriel. Life was starting.
Then the ex-Pat artists started to return back to America and a host of galleries started pushing their art. A few folks like Jackson Pollock, Ad Rheinhart, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko started to make a big splash in the big Apple. Sam Francis had to return to New York so as not to miss the boat. They drank, smoked and chased women. Different city, same attitude. Then the money started to roll in.
Francis was restless. His paintings got bigger. He met a Japanese woman artist and got her pregnant. He was invited to Japan for a commission. The “family” lived in New York for awhile but Sam missed Paris. The three moved to Paris. He got a bigger studios, bigger commissions, bigger shows. With the action happening in America, the Europeans stepped up, namely in Basel. Sam made some very good friends with deep pockets. Sam and his art was sent around the world. His fame was growing.
However he wasn’t much of a family man so why not have an affair? Woman number four. Then he got sick again. The tuberculosis infected his testicles. How ironic? Abe moved back to California to recover, rebuild. This time he started to build a giant house and studio in Los Angeles county. A he recovered, Francis got heavily involved in printmaking. Smaller pieces that sold even faster.
Sam Francis was famous by 1964. A rich Japanese oil magnate was building a museum to house all the paintings he had collected over the years, and of course he invited Sam to Japan. Tokyo was hosting the Olympics and Francis tried to create a mural but time got away for him. What didn’t get away was the daughter of the oil magnate. And she was pregnant and her visa in America was running out. Now a scandal was arising for her very conservative father.
At two thirds through the book my image of Sam Francis broke. The man was a pathetically horrible womanizer. When one reads about a famous artist, one realizes that that drive becomes an obsession that takes over one’s life. For good or bad. We all like a good story. In this case, I just like good art, and maybe, just maybe, let’s skip the story.
A month later I did finish the book. His one big positive is helping to create the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. He got married again to a British woman but still had affairs. His children are spread around the globe. Sam died of cancer at 71 that he left unchecked and tried in vain on a variety of unproven “medical” cures. He was worried about his libido. Are you kidding me? He spent money like water and when he died in 1994, his estate was worth $79 million. The ex-wives fought over the estate. His children each received $400,000. Yup a rich man dies sadly and leaves a mess.
The book was commissioned by the Sam Francis estate. Now I don’t have a great view of Sam Francis but I still love his paintings. Now I just feel cheated. No more biographies, please.
June 20, 2023
Fascinating biography of the abstract artist Sam Francis, a painter whose work seems to be everywhere (he was based in Los Angeles for many years) but whose viewpoint I never quite understood--mainly because, as Gabrielle Selz elucidates, its beauty confounds the more intellectual, meaning or processed oriented viewer. He moved to Paris fairly early in his career, and the European art culture was far more comfortable recognizing out and out beauty, where New York never really embraced his work, not including him in the first generation abstract expressionists more bent on a macho, heroic struggle with the canvas--Pollock, Rothko, Clyfford Still and the others. 'Too beautiful' is quite a strange indictment of an artist's work-- for someone not used to the 'school'ishness of the art world, kind of astonishing. But he was in Paris when the New York art world consolidated itself, and did extremely well there, became friends with second-generation Abstract painters like Joan Mitchell.
What I enjoyed about the book was first, the way Selz establishes the three great traumas of Francis's early life--his mother dying of cancer when he was 13--unbeknownst to him, having just left her in Santa Monica with her sister and returning to school in Northern California with his mathematician father and his younger brother. Like he looked away and she was gone. Then, that same year, his best friend brought a gun to school, and they were playing with it, the friend assuring him it was busted... and he shot and killed the other boy. Second blow. Then third, he was in training to become a pilot in WW2, yearning for the skies... but discovered what he really liked was to soar between the clouds and the earth--something that helps us understand his early art, especially the 'white paintings'--with the idea of becoming an aerial photographer, an extremely important and dangerous part of the air service, as most of their info on troop movement was from these low-flying images, but which leave the crew in greatest danger of being shot down. While training, he falls seriously ill with something that turns out to be spinal tuberculosis. Blow three. Like Frida Kahlo, he spends the next three years immobilized in a corset--and discovers painting as occupational therapy. With much encouragement from Bay Area painter David Park and others, he finds his way as an artist.
The rest of the book shows that boy seizing his life with both hands. He marries five times, twice to Japanese women artists and number 5 to an Englishwoman artist who had lived in Japan for many years. He travels around the world, including Japan, establishing studios everywhere he goes. He's never fully embraced by the New York School, but in establishing himself in Santa Monica, a mile from where his mother died, he becomes part of the emerging LA art scene, which includes artists such as Richard Diebenkorn (who paints his Ocean Park series in a studio borrowed from Francis), Ed Moses, James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Ed Rucha... It's a fantastic story of a man following outsized desires, looking for transcendence--and reminded me at times of the Robert Stone biography Child of Light, Stone's search for 'life more abundant'--and it's the perfect entry to understanding the light-filled art of this monumental Abstractionist.
What I enjoyed about the book was first, the way Selz establishes the three great traumas of Francis's early life--his mother dying of cancer when he was 13--unbeknownst to him, having just left her in Santa Monica with her sister and returning to school in Northern California with his mathematician father and his younger brother. Like he looked away and she was gone. Then, that same year, his best friend brought a gun to school, and they were playing with it, the friend assuring him it was busted... and he shot and killed the other boy. Second blow. Then third, he was in training to become a pilot in WW2, yearning for the skies... but discovered what he really liked was to soar between the clouds and the earth--something that helps us understand his early art, especially the 'white paintings'--with the idea of becoming an aerial photographer, an extremely important and dangerous part of the air service, as most of their info on troop movement was from these low-flying images, but which leave the crew in greatest danger of being shot down. While training, he falls seriously ill with something that turns out to be spinal tuberculosis. Blow three. Like Frida Kahlo, he spends the next three years immobilized in a corset--and discovers painting as occupational therapy. With much encouragement from Bay Area painter David Park and others, he finds his way as an artist.
The rest of the book shows that boy seizing his life with both hands. He marries five times, twice to Japanese women artists and number 5 to an Englishwoman artist who had lived in Japan for many years. He travels around the world, including Japan, establishing studios everywhere he goes. He's never fully embraced by the New York School, but in establishing himself in Santa Monica, a mile from where his mother died, he becomes part of the emerging LA art scene, which includes artists such as Richard Diebenkorn (who paints his Ocean Park series in a studio borrowed from Francis), Ed Moses, James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Ed Rucha... It's a fantastic story of a man following outsized desires, looking for transcendence--and reminded me at times of the Robert Stone biography Child of Light, Stone's search for 'life more abundant'--and it's the perfect entry to understanding the light-filled art of this monumental Abstractionist.
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February 16, 2024Gabrielle's poetic and colorful account of Sam Francis was as exhuberant as his art and as touching as was the life and health struggles of the artist. A facsinating read.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews