Bank of America is proud to be the presenting sponsor of Sam Francis and Japan: Emptiness Overflowing, which will be on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2023.
Sam Francis and Japan: Emptiness Overflowing presents works by American artist Sam Francis (1923–1994) alongside those of Japanese artists from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Regarded as one of the leading interpreters of color and light, Francis produced paintings and lithographs that reveal a dialogue in aesthetics between Western and Eastern art.
Influences from the West include references to New York abstract expressionism, color field painting and French Impressionism. Influences from the East are reflected in the Japanese concept of “ma,” the intentional interpretation of the role of negative space in an artwork. The exhibition brings together more than sixty works from LACMA’s collection and other key lenders.
Also on display are works by contemporary Japanese artists, many associated with Gutai, a radical, Japanese post-war artistic group founded in 1954 by the Osaka-based painter Jiro Yoshihara. Other works represent Mono-Ha, a pioneering art movement that emerged in Tokyo in the mid-1960s, whose artists explored materials and their properties in reaction to rapid industrialization.
Featured Japanese artists include Yamamoto Baiitsu, Kasumi Bunshō, Dōmoto Inshō, Yoshihara Jirō, Gōchō Kankai, Kasumi Setsuo, Yamaguchi Soken and Atsuko Tanaka.
LACMA is a partner in Bank of America’s Museums on Us® program, which provides our cardholders with one free general admission on the first full weekend of every month. For more information about the program, including our roster of more than 225 cultural institutions across the U.S., please visit Museums on Us®.