«Sam Francis and Berne»
The friendship that arose in Paris in 1954 between the director of the Bernese Kunsthalle Arnold Rüdllinger and the Californian artist Sam Francis was the beginning of Sam Francis’s intense relationship with the city of Bern.
In his “Tendances actuelles III” exhibition of 1955, Rüdlinger presented for the first time in Switzerland large-format, monochrome oil paintings by the then still unknown artist. In Francis’s first creative period he was occupied with the moving power of colour and the spatial experience, as was the case with the group of American artists in Paris of the 1950s, the so-called tachists. In addition to the Kunsthalle, the Galerie Kornfeld arranged regular exhibitions of his work from 1957 onward. Francis kept up many contacts to Bernese artists whose works were strongly influenced by visits to Paris, by Francis’s exhibitions and also his presence in Bern. This exhibition is dedicated to the artists Franz Fedier, Samuel Buri, Rolf Iseli and Peter Stein, whose achievements were of great importance to Swiss art.
