The "Blue Balls" series by Sam Francis, created between 1960 and 1963, represents a significant period in the artist's career, marking his exploration of color, form, and personal experience through art. These paintings, predominantly featuring organic blue forms against white backgrounds, were conceived during a challenging period of Francis's life when he was hospitalized and convalescing from kidney disease. Despite his physical condition, Francis initiated this series in Paris and continued working on it across various locations, including New York, Tokyo, Bern, and California. The series reflects his constant movement and the perpetual motion in his artistic reinvention, driven by an intuitive approach to colors and images (Smithsonian American Art Museum).
"Blue Balls VIII," for instance, illustrates the dynamic and organic interplay of forms within Francis's signature blue, suggesting a range of scales from the macroscopic to the microscopic, evoking images of orbiting planets and single-celled organisms. The work, housed in The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, underscores Francis's ability to juxtapose the flatness of intense blue areas with the dimensionality of subtly shaded spherical forms, showcasing a visual tension between movement and stasis, depth and flatness (Home).
The title "Blue Balls" carries a dual meaning, humorously referring to Francis's own experience with renal tuberculosis, which caused him physical discomfort and testicular swelling. Yet, despite its playful title, the series has been celebrated for its elegance and explosive use of color. Critics and art historians have lauded the "Blue Balls" paintings for showcasing Francis's prowess as a young artist at the height of his creative powers, contributing significantly to the openness and clarity characteristic of the art of the 1960s—a movement Francis himself helped to define (Observer).
The "Blue Balls V," acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, stands as a testament to Francis's vibrant contribution to Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. The acquisition of this work marks an important addition to the Met's collection, bridging the gap between gestural painting of the 1950s and the hard-edge painting of the 1960s, underscoring Francis's lasting impact on post-war American art (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) (Observer).