Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam was a major innovator in postwar American painting. Emerging from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid-1960s, his works both elaborated on and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting.

Biography of Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam was born in 1933 in Tupelo, Mississippi. In 1955, he received a BA from the University of Louisville, Kentucky. Later, in 1961, he obtained an MFA from the same institution. 

His career was marked by several key exhibitions, including solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He also had a traveling retrospective organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 2005.

Sam Gilliam's recent solo exhibitions include "Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years" at Pace Gallery in New York (2023), "Sam Gilliam: Late Paintings" at Pace Gallery in London (2022), "Sam Gilliam: Full Circle" at Hirshhorn Museum in Washington (2022), and many more.

Additionally, Gilliam's works have been featured in numerous group shows, including "To Weave the Sky: Textile Abstraction from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection" at El Espacio 23 in Miami (2023), "Fugues in Color" at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2022), "Convergent Evolutions: The Conscious of Body Work" at Pace Gallery in New York (2021), among others. 

Sam Gilliam died in 2022, leaving a great legacy behind with his works housed in over fifty public collections, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Tate Modern in London, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Sam Gilliam's Art Style

Sam Gilliam was known for his innovative approach to painting, particularly through his Drape paintings, where he suspended stretcherless, painted canvases from walls or ceilings. This technique expanded upon Abstract Expressionism and redefined traditional art display methods. Inspired by the improvisational ethos of jazz, Gilliam's work featured lyrical abstractions with fluid forms and vibrant colors. His constant experimentation with different forms, moods, and materials allowed him to continually push the boundaries of contemporary art.