Basel Mural I
1956–58
Sam Francis (American, 1923–1994)
Oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Gift of the Artist
© Sam Francis Foundation, California / Artist Rights Society (ARS), NY
Sam Francis and the Basel Murals
Sam Francis’s monumental painting draws visitors to the far end of the 20th-century galleries, where they encounter an unusual history in the life of an artwork. The canvas, once part of a triptych of similarly large compositions, is now installed alongside two fragments from its companion piece, Basel Mural III. The Sam Francis Foundation donated the cut-down works to the Norton Simon Museum in 2009, in order to reunite them with the related, intact example. As Donna Stein, a former Francis Foundation board member, stated, “That’s where they belong.” A video created the year of the donation takes a deep dive into Francis’s biography, including how he made the difficult decision to cut up Basel Mural III, which had suffered water damage, and his method for identifying the sections to save.
