SAM FRANCIS
Sam Francis was born in 1923 in San Mateo, California (d.1994) and began to paint as occupational therapy whilst recovering from severe back injuries sustained as a fighter pilot in the Second World War.
He went on to study art history from the great School of Paris artists, such as Fernand Leger and Henri Matisse, throughout the 1950s and developed an abstract expressionism of his own that he is so famed for today.