Sam Gilliam

American, 1933 - 2022

BiographySam Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1933. He grew up in Louisville, Kentucky and earned a Master's degree in painting at the University of Louisville in 1961. A year later, he moved to Washington D.C. and quickly became affiliated with the Washington Color Painters including Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Gene Davis, who produced large-scale abstract paintings by staining or pouring thinnned paint on unprimed canvas. Gilliam, however, went a step further, and is considered the first artist to introduce the concept of hanging a painted canvas from the wall freed from the stretcher bars, which he innovated around 1967-68. These are referred to as his "draped" or "suspended" paintings, which the artist has variously soaked, stained, and splattered with luminous bright colors. Gilliam also introduced the technique of folding and creasing the canvas to provide a structural means while emphasizing the chromatic depth and expressive force that comes from enhancing the tension between chance and control. "Asking" is a prime example of the artist's work from the early 1970s, a seminal period when he was exploring these various techniques and processes in his art.

Gilliam has garnered international recognition for his abstract paintings claiming "a place in the epic tradition of American painting" according to the Grove Dictionary of Art. He is widely considered by critics and scholars to be the most prominent African American painter of the post-war period. Gilliam has been the subject of over fifty solo exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States. The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. organized a major retrospective of his work in 2005, accompanied by a major monograph on the artist. His work is represented in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Walker Art Center; the Menil Collection; The Tate Gallery, London, and many others.

Person TypeIndividual