Sam Gilliam
Sam Gilliam (b. 1933, Tupelo, Mississippi) is a prominent Color Field painter associated with the Washington Color School, a faction of artists whose name derives from a 1965 group show held at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in Washington D.C. Although known for their monumental and affecting paintings, their work remains distinct from the Abstract Expressionism movement as it generally exhibits clear organizational and premeditated qualities. Gilliam, in particular, is credited with conflating the dissimilar categories of painting and sculpture by way of colossal, draped canvases.
The artist is recognized for having obsessively mined the possibilities of abstract painting, ultimately leaving behind a prolific body of work that still serves as a North Star for many of today’s art-makers and viewers alike. Gilliam’s practice is inherently explorative; the artist has explored a variety of media—including painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculptures. His work encompasses his wide-reaching cultural and intellectual experiences and draws on a varied reserve of images, ideas, and information. His oeuvre holds a very compelling narrative on identity and resiliency and is rooted in a firm understanding of critical contemporary challenges related to inequality and exclusion.
Some series of artworks were produced following Gilliam’s time in West Africa, where he immersed himself within communities on the fringes of modern society; tribes living in the central plateau region of Mali. His works are thus a reflection of his thoughts and experiences as well as his personal wanderings and affinities with members of these ethnic groups that have managed to strongly uphold their traditions throughout centuries. These pieces are indisputably some of the finest and most emblematic of the artist’s oeuvre as a force for social commentary and away to promote cultural awareness.
Gilliam’s Marathon pieces were created in the early 2000s with the expert insight of master printmaker Steven M. Andersen, a longtime friend and collaborator of the artist. The two have worked together closely to develop suites of works that are now considered archetypal of Gilliam’s most accomplished oeuvres. Coming of age during the 1970s American printmaking renaissance, Steven M. Andersen—once dubbed the enfant terrible of the fine art printing industry—has amassed a remarkable track record of producing limited edition pieces with some of the most sought-after American artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
In addition to a traveling retrospective organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 2005, Sam Gilliam has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1971); The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1982); Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris Branch, New York (1993); J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, Louisville, Kentucky (1996); Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2011); and Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018), among many other institutions. A semi-permanent installation of Gilliam’s paintings will opened at Dia:Beacon in August 2019. His work is included in over fifty public collections, including those of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in Washington, D.C.
Courtesy of Approximately Blue
