Sam Francis & Walasse Ting; Friends: Opening Saturday, December 9, 2006 Gallery Delaive

9 December - 30 January 2007

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, Dec. 7 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- The idea for

the book ‘1cent life’ began in Manhattan at the beginning of December in

1962, in the milieu of the new exciting art of the time. A small circle of

friends would meet nearly every evening in the studio of Sam Francis. To one

of those evenings, Walasse Ting, a refugee from mainland China added a

special touch. He had learned English as a sailor on the boat trip from China

to Europe. He wrote poetry, and painted in three different styles:

figurative, abstract and beautiful classic Chinese pictures.

Ting wanted to publish the most international illustrated book, intended

to illustrate his text, uniting tachisme, neo-dadaisme, pop art, and all

other artistic movements. The project was completed in June 1964; around

Ting’s poems were grouped 28 very different American and a few European

painters. The ‘pop artists’ formed the central core of the group. Among

them were Warhol, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Indiana, Wesselmann

and Dine. There were the ‘Abstract Expressionists’ such as Sam Francis and

Saura and members of Cobra as Pierre Alechinsky, Asger Jorn, and Karel Appel.

Other great names such as Rauschenburg, Joan Mitchell, Bram van Velde and

Riopelle also took part in the project. The book very quickly became the

manifesto of a new generation of painters and the expression of the new

pictorial research that they were engaged in.

Sam Francis was the editor of ‘1cent life’. Ting and Francis met in the

early fifties in Paris where they both lived and worked. Ting and Francis’s

path would cross more than once artistically. In 1972 the Museum of Art in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania exhibited paintings of Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell

and Walasse Ting together in one show titled Fresh Air School.

The friendship of Sam Francis and Walasse Ting was that of a special

kind, they always stayed in touch over the years. Their last visit was in

1993, half a year before Sam Francis died. Walasse Ting suffered a severe

brain haemorrhage in 2002 and is not able to communicate anymore or take part

in life as he would have wanted to.

Information and Photo material

For more information and photo material please look at:

http://www.delaive.com/press.htm or contact us at: gallery.delaive@wxs.nl .