Samuel Lewis Francis, called Sam Francis, was born in San Mateo, California in 1923. He studied Botany, then Psychology to Berkeley. Pilot of the US Air Forces during the Second World War, his plane crashed and his spinal column was seriously injured. He spent almost four years, immobilized in a hospital bed and he also began painting. After his recovering, he began studies of Art to the University of California (1948-1950). In 1950, he settled down in Paris and stayed until 1961 in the south of France. His first personal exhibition was hold in Paris in 1952.

Influenced by the colour-field painting, Sam Francis worked with white as a background color, to which he applied differentiating spots of color which flowed, enclosed or liberated the virgin space. Expressing himself on all formats, the artist worked by series organic forms or mosaics ones, figures or "linen" (1965-1969). In the second half of the 60s, Sam Francis made paintings of smokes colored, thrown in the sky by helicopters. In the 70s, the artist is interested in Jung’s theory of the unconscious, in esotericism, and painted more suggestive canvases. Later, Sam Francis played more and more with color with which he splashed canvases, drawings, and monotypes without any care to the form (series "immediate Paintings"). Sam Francis died in Santa Monica (United States) in 1994.