Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art gallery celebrates the genius of Sam Francis in the new exhibit, Sam Francis: The '70s from February 15, 2019, through April 12, 2019. This carefully curated exhibition of paintings by the internationally renowned artist Sam Francis features important works from the 1970s.

American artist Sam Francis (1923-1994) is internationally recognized for his unique visual language; one of intensity and exuberant use of color, light, and negative space. According to author and critic Richard Speer, "The 1970s saw a remarkable flowering in Sam Francis’s evolution as a painter and visual thinker. This was arguably his most spectacularly innovative decade, a period of pictorial and conceptual ideas in dynamic flux as the artist configured, deconstructed, and reconstructed color, form, and space in muscular expansions and contractions.”

Francis' exploration of negative space is key in this period according to Speer, “this mastery of the spaces between is in abundant evidence in Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art's exhibition of important Francis works from the 1970s. Time after time, the paintings displayed in this exhilarating exhibit point to Francis reenergizing his commitment to negative space and making these lyrical voids, and the profundities they encompassed, accessible to lay viewers and connoisseurs alike."

A few of the monumental works on view include Green (Untitled) (SFP71-34) with its dynamic interior spaces and SFP79-15 with its exciting bands of color woven into powerful grids and the duo of Untitled (SFP79-15) (SFF.731) and Untitled (SFP79-16) (SFF.732), both from 1979-80, which for years graced the Weinstock’s (later Macy’s) department store in Sacramento, California.