Press and Editorial

JIM DINE & SAM FRANCIS with MASTER VISIONS

23/10/2012
Bill Gregory

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» View JIM DINE & SAM FRANCIS with MASTER VISIONS exhibition

Annandale Galleries are proud to present this new exhibition of JIM DINE and SAM FRANCIS.
As a draughtsman, Dine is extraordinary and comparable to Picasso in the importance he places on drawing and imagery.  Francis by contrast has more in common with the more abstract sensational colours of Miro. Images are evoked as opposed to any literal reading.  The large gallery at Annandale will feature important works by each artist and it is hoped that exhibiting them together will allow the viewer to better understand both artists in a meaningful way in contrast to a solo show.

Jim Dine (b. 1935)
Dine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1935.  He grew up in what he regards as the beautiful landscape of the Midwest, a tone and time to which he returns constantly. He studied at the University of Cincinnati and the Boston Museum School and received his BFA from Ohio University in 1957.
Dine, renowned for his wit and creativity as a Pop and Happenings artist, has a restless, searching intellect that leads him to challenge himself constantly.  Over four decades, Dine has produced more than three thousand paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints, as well as performance works, stage and book designs, poetry, and even music. His art has been the subject of numerous individual and group shows and is in the permanent collections of museums around the world.
Dine’s earliest art - Happenings and an incipient form of Pop Art - emerged against the backdrop of Abstract Expressionism and action painting in the late 1950s.
Objects, most importantly household tools, began to appear in his work at about the same time; a handson quality distinguished these pieces, which combine elements of painting, sculpture, and installation, as well as works in various other media, including etching and lithography.  Through a restricted range of obsessive images, which continue to be reinvented in various guises - bathrobe, heart, outstretched hand, wrought-iron gate, and Venus de Milo - Dine presents compelling stand-ins for himself and mysterious metaphors for his art.  The human body, conveyed through anatomical fragments and suggested by items of clothing and other objects, emerges as one of Dine’s most urgent subjects. Making use of the language of expressionism and applying it to themes concerning the artist as a creative but solitary individual, Dine ultimately asserts himself as a late-twentiethcentury heir to the romantic tradition.
Jim Dine has had more than 300 solo exhibitions world wide since 1962.

Sam Francis (1923-1994)
American painter and printmaker.  Francis was born in 1923 in San Mateo, CA, is renowned for his California Abstract Expressionist work.  While studying medicine and psychology, obtaining a BA (1949) and MA (1950) at the University of California at Berkeley, Francis began painting under David Park.  He experimented with the styles of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, and was particularly influenced by the Abstract Expressionist work of Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Clyfford Still.
Primarily interested in transforming different sensations of light onto canvas, Francis was drawn to the light of California, where he lived and worked, as well as Monet’s Waterlillies series.  Dripping, fluidly painted corpuscular shapes are typical elements, circulating freely around his canvas and indicating what was to become the artist’s perennial concern with ‘ceaseless instability.’
With his sensitivity to sensuous color and light, Francis’ work grew to develop a unique style that ultimately communicated very different concerns from the expressive iconography and energy of many of the Abstract Expressionists who had first influenced him.  Despite the apparent spontaneity of his compositions, he was highly methodical and rigorous.  In his later work, Francis pushed abstract forms to the edges of the composition, leaving large empty spaces that recalled his travels to Asia and Eastern art’s notion of negative space.
Sam Francis’ work has been exhibited internationally for over fifty years and is currently held in the permanent collection of every encyclopedic modern art museum in the world.
He passed away in Santa Monica, California, in 1994.



MASTER VISIONS is an exhibition of works by artists who are roughly contemporary to DINE / FRANCIS and is meant to provide further context to that show.  With this in mind we have some of the great masters of the late 20th century as well as artists like CLOSE and SULTAN who are carrying on some of these traditions.  A feauture of the exhibition are the set of Marylin Monroe prints as well as ORIGINAL DRAWINGS by ANDY WARHOL.

For further press, information or visuals please contact the Annandale Galleries

« Back to main press page


» Click here to download PDF
» View JIM DINE & SAM FRANCIS with MASTER VISIONS exhibition

Annandale Galleries are proud to present this new exhibition of JIM DINE and SAM FRANCIS.
As a draughtsman, Dine is extraordinary and comparable to Picasso in the importance he places on drawing and imagery.  Francis by contrast has more in common with the more abstract sensational colours of Miro. Images are evoked as opposed to any literal reading.  The large gallery at Annandale will feature important works by each artist and it is hoped that exhibiting them together will allow the viewer to better understand both artists in a meaningful way in contrast to a solo show.

Jim Dine (b. 1935)
Dine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1935.  He grew up in what he regards as the beautiful landscape of the Midwest, a tone and time to which he returns constantly. He studied at the University of Cincinnati and the Boston Museum School and received his BFA from Ohio University in 1957.
Dine, renowned for his wit and creativity as a Pop and Happenings artist, has a restless, searching intellect that leads him to challenge himself constantly.  Over four decades, Dine has produced more than three thousand paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints, as well as performance works, stage and book designs, poetry, and even music. His art has been the subject of numerous individual and group shows and is in the permanent collections of museums around the world.
Dine’s earliest art - Happenings and an incipient form of Pop Art - emerged against the backdrop of Abstract Expressionism and action painting in the late 1950s.
Objects, most importantly household tools, began to appear in his work at about the same time; a handson quality distinguished these pieces, which combine elements of painting, sculpture, and installation, as well as works in various other media, including etching and lithography.  Through a restricted range of obsessive images, which continue to be reinvented in various guises - bathrobe, heart, outstretched hand, wrought-iron gate, and Venus de Milo - Dine presents compelling stand-ins for himself and mysterious metaphors for his art.  The human body, conveyed through anatomical fragments and suggested by items of clothing and other objects, emerges as one of Dine’s most urgent subjects. Making use of the language of expressionism and applying it to themes concerning the artist as a creative but solitary individual, Dine ultimately asserts himself as a late-twentiethcentury heir to the romantic tradition.
Jim Dine has had more than 300 solo exhibitions world wide since 1962.

Sam Francis (1923-1994)
American painter and printmaker.  Francis was born in 1923 in San Mateo, CA, is renowned for his California Abstract Expressionist work.  While studying medicine and psychology, obtaining a BA (1949) and MA (1950) at the University of California at Berkeley, Francis began painting under David Park.  He experimented with the styles of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, and was particularly influenced by the Abstract Expressionist work of Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Clyfford Still.
Primarily interested in transforming different sensations of light onto canvas, Francis was drawn to the light of California, where he lived and worked, as well as Monet’s Waterlillies series.  Dripping, fluidly painted corpuscular shapes are typical elements, circulating freely around his canvas and indicating what was to become the artist’s perennial concern with ‘ceaseless instability.’
With his sensitivity to sensuous color and light, Francis’ work grew to develop a unique style that ultimately communicated very different concerns from the expressive iconography and energy of many of the Abstract Expressionists who had first influenced him.  Despite the apparent spontaneity of his compositions, he was highly methodical and rigorous.  In his later work, Francis pushed abstract forms to the edges of the composition, leaving large empty spaces that recalled his travels to Asia and Eastern art’s notion of negative space.
Sam Francis’ work has been exhibited internationally for over fifty years and is currently held in the permanent collection of every encyclopedic modern art museum in the world.
He passed away in Santa Monica, California, in 1994.



MASTER VISIONS is an exhibition of works by artists who are roughly contemporary to DINE / FRANCIS and is meant to provide further context to that show.  With this in mind we have some of the great masters of the late 20th century as well as artists like CLOSE and SULTAN who are carrying on some of these traditions.  A feauture of the exhibition are the set of Marylin Monroe prints as well as ORIGINAL DRAWINGS by ANDY WARHOL.

For further press, information or visuals please contact the Annandale Galleries

« Back to main press page



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