About Sam Gilliam
Throughout his life and career, Sam Gilliam pushed the boundaries of abstraction by consistently inventing forms and incorporating new materials into his work. In the 1960s, Gilliam established himself as a pioneer of abstract art when he freed the canvas from the constraints of the wooden stretcher, forever changing the trajectory of painting. His iconic Drape paintings, which he continued to iterate over the course of his life, blur the boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture and emphasize the experience and possibilities of painting.
Gilliam is widely revered as a brilliant colorist who used vibrant tones in compelling new ways, and is lauded as an expansive member of the Washington Color School. His work is often considered an evolution of Abstract Expressionism, alongside notable artists such as Jackson Pollock and Kenneth Noland, and is recognized for his revolutionary use of color as a means to create structure on the canvas and for his understanding of paint as a sculptural material.
For Gilliam, artmaking was inherently political. During the tumultuous decades of the sixties and seventies, when many artists turned to figurative works to address social issues,
Gilliam remained committed to abstraction, which allowed his work to be interpreted in myriad ways. While his influences were as wide-ranging as European modernism, jazz, constructivism, and renaissance painting, he simultaneously advanced appreciation of the work of Black artists on his own terms and, in 1972, was the first African American artist to represent the United States in a solo presentation at the Venice Biennale.
Gilliam was included in the Venice Biennale for a second time in 2017, and was the subject of solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1971), The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1982), J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, Louisville, Kentucky (1996), Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018), and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2022). Gilliam received the U.S. State Department’s Medal of Arts in 2015 for his cultural diplomacy, as well as honorary doctorates from eight universities. He was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022. In addition to his countless professional accolades, Gilliam maintained an active relationship with young artists and curators through his work as a teacher and his openness to art practitioners and scholars visiting his studio.
Explore pivotal moments in Gilliam’s life
1930
Sam Gilliam is born on Thanksgiving Day in Tupelo, Mississippi. He is the seventh of eight children of Sam and Estery Gilliam. Sam Sr. is a carpenter, while Estery is the primary caregiver for the large family.
1933
Early years in Tupelo, Mississippi
Gilliam hid his childhood’s influence on his artistic practice in easter eggs throughout his work, which references carousels, fireflies and Ferris wheels, kites, abacuses, among other from his youth. In adulthood, he continued to derive inspiration from childhood toys, like a red plastic truck, marbles wooden planes, scattered throughout his studios and homes.
1940
The Gilliam family moves to Louisville, Kentucky, when Sam is seven years old. He attends segregated schools until college. At Virginia Avenue Elementary School his creativity and artistic interests are encouraged and supported by both his teachers and parents. Sam attends a junior high school with a special art program, but in tenth grade he transitions to Central High School, which is without a dedicated art program. Nonetheless, Gilliam will continually reflect on the support he received from his teachers for his interest in art throughout his time in school.
1942 – 1949
Childhood in Louisville
1950
Gilliam graduates from high school and begins studies at the University of Louisville. It is one of the first southern universities to be desegregated in 1950 and 1951. Gilliam is a member of the second admitted class of Black undergraduate students.
Gilliam begins a relationship with Dorothy Butler, a Louisville native who is studying at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri.
Gilliam graduates from the University of Louisville, Kentucky, with a BA in Creative Arts. His first solo exhibition as a student takes place at the University of Kentucky’s Frame House Gallery, where he presents a selection of paintings of single abstracted figures walking in the landscape, which he refers to as images of Dorothy Butler walking.
1951
Graduates from Central High School in Louisville, Kentucky.
1951 – 1955
Attends University of Louisville, earning a bachelor of arts degree with a major in creative art.
1956 – 1958
Joins the ROTC and serves in the U.S. Army, stationed in Yokohama, Japan.
Gilliam is drafted into the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) of the US Army. He is stationed for basic training in Texas and later stationed as a company clerk at a base in Yokohama, Japan. In Japan he discovers new printmaking techniques, Kabuki theatre and sees exhibitions by Yves Klein in Tokyo and Picasso in Yokohama. Upon completing his tour in Japan, Gilliam realizes he is not interested in being a soldier and leaves the army to complete his graduate studies in art.
1958 -1961
Return to Louisville
Gilliam attends the MFA graduate program at the Hite Art Institute of the University of Louisville, Kentucky. He teaches public school by day and pursues his studies at night. During this time, he works with professors who influence his approach to art-making. In particular, Ulfert Wilke, a German expressionist painter, takes a special interest in Gilliam’s talent and encourages him to go to Europe, offering him a scholarship to study in Munich, which does not materialize, but encourages Gilliam to keep painting. Another German professor visiting from the Bavarian Academy of Art, Charles Crodel, is also deeply influential and remains in Gilliam’s mind throughout his career because of his encouragement to persevere in creating one’s own unique and steadfast vision and approach to art-making. Gilliam will later reference the importance of Cordel’s guidance and inspiration in a Commencement speech in 1986.
Gilliam is active in the local artists’ community and cofounds Gallery Enterprises Collective (1957–71), which includes artists Kenneth Young and Bob Thompson. Gilliam is also president of the university’s youth council and a regular participant in National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) programs at the University of Louisville.
Gilliam continues to date Butler, who is enrolled in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York, following her time as a reporter for the Black weekly, The Memphis Tri-State Defender, where she cov- ered the integration of Little Rock Central High school by the Little Rock Nine. They continue an on-again, off- again, long-distance relationship while Butler pursues her education and work opportunities in journalism.
Gilliam graduates in 1961 with an MFA in Painting.
He works on the Great Northern Railroad between Minneapolis and Seattle as a waiter during the summer of 1961.
1960
In 1962, Gilliam and Butler are married on September 1. Together they move to Washington, D.C. after Butler is offered a position as reporter on the City Desk at the Washington Post, becoming the first Black female reporter at the newspaper.
Gilliam begins teaching at McKinley Technical High School, an art-focused public school where he will teach until 1967.
1963
Early Years in Washington, D.C.
Gilliam establishes his first Washington, D.C. studio on 17th and Q Street and presents his work with the D.C. gallery, Adams-Morgan Gallery. His first exhibition includes watercolours and a single large-scale painting.
The exhibition is an occasion for him to meet Washington Color School painter Tom Downing, who becomes an important influence and mentor throughout Gilliam’s early career. He also meets fellow Color School painters Howard Mehring and Paul Reed. Downing introduces Gilliam to Rockne Krebs; Krebs will become an important friend, collaborator and studio mate of Gilliam for several decades.
At this time, Gilliam also meets Washington-based senior painter Alma Thomas, who shows at Barnett-Aden Gallery along with other senior Black artists Romare Bearden, Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett; the gallery is the first successful Black-owned private art gallery in the United States and is a stalwart amongst the artist community in D.C.
On 28 August, Gilliam and Butler participate in the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, together with over 250,000 people, advocating for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. At the march, final speaker Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his historic speech, ‘I Have a Dream’.
The Gilliam’s first daughter, Stephanie Jessica, is born.
During the summer of 1962, Gilliam completes his first major series, Park Invention, comprising impressions in oil and watercolor depicting Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.
Gilliam’s family expands in the 1960s with the births of their three children, Stephanie Jessica, Melissa Lynne, and L. Franklin.
On August 28, 1963, Gilliam and Butler participate in the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which saw over 250,000 individuals protesting for the civil and economic rights of African Americans and culminated in Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech.
Poem by Sam Gilliam, c. 1965.
1965-66
Late 60s in Washington, D.C.
Gilliam begins to exhibit his work with Jefferson Place Gallery. The gallery will represent the artist until 1973.
The Gilliam’s second daughter, Melissa Lynne, is born.
Butler leaves her position at the Washington Post to work as a freelance journalist so that she can devote more time to raising the family’s young daughters.
Gilliam participates in significant group exhibitions that are nationally and internationally recognized, in particular, ‘The Negro in American Art’ at University of California, Los Angeles and ‘The First World Festival of Negro Arts’, in Dakar.
He meets curator and museum director Walter Hopps, who has recently moved to D.C. to work at the progressive think tank, the Institute of Policy Studies. Hopps will become a confidante and supporter of Gilliam’s work throughout Hopps’s lifetime, providing Gilliam with important exhibition opportunities, advice and avenues for financial support.
Gilliam’s exhibition at Jefferson Place Gallery is his first presentation of his stained canvases.
During an exhibition at Jefferson Place Gallery, Gilliam’s work Red Petals (1966) catches the eye of Marjorie Phillips, co-founder of the Phillips Collection, who purchases the painting, deciding to mount a solo exhibition of Gilliam’s work, Sam Gilliam: Paintings (October 7 –November 14, 1967).
1967-68
Pivotal Years
Gilliam’s focus turns almost exclusively to a process of staining and folding unstretched canvas, which will become a hallmark of his work. Paint is poured on a wet canvas, which is then folded; additional paint is applied to the folded canvas, which is then, once dry, stretched onto a wooden support.
Marjorie Phillips, wife of Duncan Phillips and Director of the Phillips Collection, sees Red Petals (1966) in Gilliam’s exhibition at Jefferson Place Gallery. She purchases the painting for the Phillips Collection and decides to host a solo exhibition of Gilliam’s work.
Gilliam receives his first Individual Artist Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, allowing him to leave full-time teaching at McKinley Technical High School to concentrate on art-making.
Gilliam begins teaching at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. He will teach there until 1982.
The Gilliam’s third child, Leah Franklin, is born.
Gilliam meets artist Kenneth Noland at a party in New York City with Tom Downing and Dorothy Butler. Shortly afterwards, he visits Noland’s studio in South Shaftsbury, Vermont.
Gilliam receives a significant grant from the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, now under the direction of Walter Hopps, who initiates a programme to support artists through long-term fellowships, known as the Washington Gallery of Modern Art Workshop Program. Gilliam receives a $50,000 grant to fund the studio’s operations at 1737 Johnson Avenue, NW, as well as a yearly $5,000 stipend, and begins to explore new ways of working on a larger scale.
Gilliam exhibits a 30-foot-long bevelled-edge painting as part of his solo exhibition at Byron Gallery in New York.
He is asked to donate a painting to ‘In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’, a benefit exhibition for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Gilliam’s work, Away (1969) is notably priced third highest in the auction, after Tony Smith and Barnett Newman.
Gilliam travels to Paris and Nice, France.
In 1969, Gilliam’s exhibition at Jefferson Place Gallery features the artist’s first large-scale Drape paintings, including Carousel Form II (1969)
Gilliam also works on a series of red and black paintings. One is significantly titled April 4 – the date of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. The paintings are made a year after Gilliam is witness to the looting, fires and civil unrest along 14th Street in Washington, D.C., from his studio on Johnson Avenue, following the news of King’s death.
Gilliam is awarded the Art Institute of Chicago’s Norman W. Harris prize.
Gilliam is invited to participate in ‘X to the Fourth Power’, a group exhibition curated by fellow Black abstract artist William T. Williams at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, which also includes the work of Melvin Edwards. As artists working in abstraction at a time when the Black art community is rejecting the tropes of post-war abstraction in favour of figurative and representational works, the trio begin to organize their own exhibitions – first at Black galleries, colleges and universities – Morgan State, Howard and Fisk universities and later, on the invitation of other mainstream institutions such as the Wadsworth Atheneum. They will go on to exhibit together five times between 1969 and 1976 and again in 2022 in one of the last exhibitions in which Gilliam will participate before his death.
Walter Hopps invites Gilliam, Rockne Krebs and Ed McGowin to present new site-specific commissions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, where he is now director. Hopps encourages the artists to expand their work for the show in both scale and ambition. Gilliam includes a monumental Drape painting, Light Depth (1969), responding directly to the museum’s architecture.
1970
In 1970, Gilliam presents his work in Europe for the first time, at Galerie Darthea Speyer, who will represent the artist in Paris for over three decades, until 2007. His work is also included in several exhibitions surveying the Washington Color School at institutions throughout the US and Canada, in which he is identified as part of a second generation of artists influenced by the work of Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler and Kenneth Noland, among others. In several of these exhibitions, including the influential ‘Ten Washington Artists’, he is the only Black artists to be invited.
Gilliam is an artist-in-residence at Oberlin College in March. He later gifts the Allen Memorial Art Museum a significant Drape painting, Softly Still (1973).
Gilliam serves on a six-person jury for the National Council on the Arts fellowship awards for twenty young painters and sculptors of ‘exceptional talent’, together with William Seitz, director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University; James Speyer, curator of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago; James Melchert, artist and teacher at the University of California at Berkeley; Vanderen Coke, a historian of art and photography at the University of New Mexico; James Camp, an art historian at the University of South Florida.
In 1975, Gilliam exhibits his first outdoor installation of large- scale Drape paintings, Seahorses, presented on the façade of the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of the summer Philadelphia Festival, organized by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. The paintings are installed the following summer at the Brooklyn Museum.
Gilliam makes Three Panels for Mr. Robeson (1975), named in honour of the Civil Rights activist, actor and singer Paul Robeson, who is also the subject of Dorothy Gilliam’s 1976 biography, Paul Roberson: All American. The three-panel painting is considered a masterwork of Gilliam’s suspended canvases. The piece is first presented in the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s 34th Biennial of Contemporary American Painting.
Gilliam becomes an early board member of the Washington Project of the Arts, along with William Christenberry, Tom Green, E. Ethelbert Miller, Robert Rauschenberg, Renée Stout and Maida Withers.
Gilliam is the inaugural artist-in residence at the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia. He will become a longstanding supporter of the workshop and will return several times to make prints.
Gilliam receives a Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Louisville.
In 1978, Gilliam’s survey exhibition, ‘Indoor & Outdoor Paintings 1967–1978’, at the University Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is accompanied by the artist’s first major exhibition monograph, featuring texts by Hugh Marlais Davies and Jay Martin Kloner. The show features four outdoor paintings, including Circular Place Reflection (1978), commissioned by the University Gallery and installed on its exterior wall.
In 1979, the US General Services Administration (GSA) commissions Triple Variants, an artwork comprised of a large unstretched canvas, an aluminium beam and two large stones, installed on the 23rd-floor lobby of Richard B. Russell Federal Building and US Courthouse in Atlanta.
Gilliam is an artist in residence at Vermillion Editions Ltd, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he completes a series of monoprints, Coffee Thyme, with master printer Steve Anderson. He will return several times to work with the print studio in Minneapolis.
1971
National and International Recognition
Gilliam presents his first major solo exhibition at a New York institution at The Museum of Modern Art as part of its ‘Projects’ series.
Gilliam’s work is also included in notable group exhibitions defining shifts in contemporary art, including, ‘Works for New Spaces’, the Walker Art Center’s inaugural exhibition in its new building in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Gilliam’s contribution is Carousel Merge (1971), a 75-foot-long Drape painting hung from the ceiling in the public space between the museum’s galleries.
Gilliam is also included in DE-LUXE, a groundbreaking exhibition presented in a dilapidated movie theatre in
Houston’s Fifth Ward. Curated by artist Peter Bradley, the exhibition brings together 18 artists, including Anthony Caro, Ed Clark, Virginia Jaramillo, Al Loving, Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski among others. The exhibition is regarded as one of the first racially integrated exhibitions.
Gilliam, together with Richard Hunt, Daniel LaRue Johnson and Roy DeCarava, among others, withdraws from ‘Contemporary Black Artists in America’, an exhibition of 75 Black artists at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, in solidarity with the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, a group of Black artists co-led by Benny Andrews. The Coalition initiated the project in 1969 following long consultations with the museum on the lack of representation of Black artists in the museum’s exhibition programme and collection. However, the Coalition is ultimately critical of the exhibition being organized by a white curator, the museum’s lack of consultation with Black art experts in the selection of artists and the timing of the exhibition.
Gilliam co-authors an Op-Ed in Artforum on the subject with John Dowell, Melvin Edwards, Richard, Daniel Johnson, Joe Overstreet and William T. Williams.
Gilliam receives a Guggenheim Foundation Award.
Gilliam travels to Rome, Beirut, India, Greece and Kassel, Germany. This same year he also travels to other parts of Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia and Venice.
1971-74
First Major Solo Exhibitions
Gilliam presents his first major solo exhibition at a New York institution at The Museum of Modern Art as part of its ‘Projects’ series.
Gilliam’s work is also included in notable group exhibitions defining shifts in contemporary art, including, ‘Works for New Spaces’, the Walker Art Center’s inaugural exhibition in its new building in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Gilliam’s contribution is Carousel Merge (1971), a 75-foot long Drape painting hung from the ceiling in the public space between the museum’s galleries.
Gilliam is also included in DE-LUXE, a groundbreaking exhibition presented in a dilapidated movie theatre in Houston’s Fifth Ward. Curated by artist Peter Bradley, the exhibition brings together 18 artists, including Anthony Caro, Ed Clark, Virginia Jaramillo, Al Loving, Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski among others. The exhibition is regarded as one of the first racially integrated exhibitions.
Gilliam, together with Richard Hunt, Daniel LaRue Johnson and Roy DeCarava, among others, withdraws from ‘Contemporary Black Artists in America’, an exhibition of 75 Black artists at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, in solidarity with the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, a group of Black artists co-led by Benny Andrews. The Coalition initiated the project in 1969 following long consultations with the museum on the lack of representation of Black artists in the museum’s exhibition programme and collection. However, the Coalition is ultimately critical of the exhibition being organized by a white curator, the museum’s lack of consultation with Black art experts in the selection of artists and the timing of the exhibition.
Gilliam co-authors an Op-Ed in Artforum on the subject with John Dowell, Melvin Edwards, Richard, Daniel Johnson, Joe Overstreet and William T. Williams.
Gilliam receives a Guggenheim Foundation Award.
Gilliam travels to Rome, Beirut, India, Greece and Kassel, Germany. This same year he also travels to other parts of Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia and Venice.
Gilliam’s work is included in the 36th Venice Biennale at the US Pavilion, curated by Walter Hopps. Six artists are represented along with Gilliam: Ron Davis, Richard Estes, James Nutt, Keith Sonnier and Diane Arbus.
Dorothy Gilliam returns to a full-time position at the Washington Post as Style section assistant editor.
Gilliam continues to explore large-scale works that expand painting beyond the frame of the canvas. He contributes a newly commissioned large-scale Drape painting to ‘Works in Spaces’, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, titled Autumn Surf (1973), which is made with 150 yards of polypropylene and suspended and draped over long red- wood beams.
Gilliam is awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant for his studio workshop activities, which he also receives in 1974 and 1975.
Gilliam presents his work for the second time with Melvin Edwards and William T. Williams (following the 1969 show ‘X to the Fourth Power’, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York), at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut.
Gilliam is a visiting artist at the University of Wisconsin and begins to create prints with fellow faculty member, William Weege, founder and master printer of Jones Road Print Shop and Stable, in Barneveld, Wisconsin.
In 1972 Gilliam’s work is included in the 36th Venice Biennale at the US Pavilion, curated by Walter Hopps (pictured at the far left). Six artists are represented along with Gilliam: Ron Davis, Richard Estes, James Nutt, Keith Sonnier and Diane Arbus.
As a visiting artist at the University of Wisconsin in 1973, Gilliam meets fellow faculty member, William Weege, and creates his first prints at Wegee’s Jones Road Print Shop and Stable in Barneveld, Wisconsin.
In this photograph taken by Gregory Conniff, c. 1973, Gilliam raises a paper pulp covered fist.
With funding from a new ‘Art and Architecture’ federal program, sponsored by the United States General Services Administration (GSA), the Philadelphia Museum of Art commissions a series of artists to create public works.
Once commissioned, Gilliam visits the museum several times, taking inspiration from a bronze sculpture of Neptune outside of the museum and the bronze rings encircling its façade, a reference to rings, according to Greek mythology, used to tie seahorses to Neptune’s temple.
Aided by sail makers, Gilliam creates Seahorses, his first outdoor installation and the largest scale Drape painting to date, billowing on the museum’s façade during the summer Philadelphia Festival, organized by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (April 26 – May 25, 1975.). The paintings are installed the following summer at the Brooklyn Museum.
Gilliam creates inventive print works using new techniques, Philly and Philadelphia Soft, at the Fabric Workshop. They are 7′ 10″ and 8′ 5″, exceeding the usual dimensions of prints, and are displayed suspended from the ceiling, similarly to Gilliam’s Drape paintings.
Gilliam creates Custom Road Slide (1977) a series of four- teen ephemeral outdoor ‘constructions’ of fabric, wood, shale and pigment, placed along 400 yards of roadway lining the Niagara Gorge.
In 1979, Gilliam purchases a building at 14th and U Streets, NW with fellow Washington Color School painter Rockne Krebs (pictured) as the artists’ joint studio space. After Gilliam received funding from the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, he first establishes a studio with Krebs in 1968 at 1737 Johnson Avenue, NW, which provided working space for other artists as well.
1980
Gilliam receives an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from his alma mater, the University of Louisville. He is also named Visiting Distinguished Louis D. Beaumont Professor of Art, School of Fine Arts, Washington University in St Louis.
The GSA commissions another work for its collection, Box Cars Grand, which is installed in the lobby of the federal building in Detroit.
Gilliam’s work is included in the influential exhibition, ‘Afro-American Abstraction’, curated by April Kingsley and organized by P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, which travels to nine institutions throughout the US. Featuring works by nineteen artists, including Ellsworth Ausby, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Edward Clark, Houston Conwill, Melvin Edwards, Sam Gilliam, David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, Richard Hunt, Jamillah Jennings, James Little, Alvin Loving, Tyrone Mitchell, Senga Nengudi, Howardena Pindell, Martin Puryear, Charles Searles, Jack Whitten and William T. Williams, the exhibition offers a counter-argument to Greenbergian formalism through an exploration of the relationship between African art and culture and abstract art created by Black artists in the United States.
1982
‘Red & Black to “D”: Paintings by Sam Gilliam
Red and Black to D opens at the Studio Museum in Harlem on November 16 1982, organized by curator and Studio Museum director Mary Schmidt Campbell. For Gilliam, the exhibition marks a return to stretched canvas and a refocus monochromatic painting, exploring the colors red and black specifically for this exhibition, through shaped canvas, layered collage, and a deep investigation of a single hue.
Schmidt Campbell writes, “Whereas the Red and Black paintings were intense, the D paintings were more playful. Full of colour, smaller than the red or black paintings they bore metal D shapes protruding from the bright surfaces” (Sam Gilliam, Phaidon, 2024).
Artworks include Cartouche (1981), Lion’s Rock Arc (1981), Elm (1981), To Miró — to Birds (1982), MacArthur award-winning scholar Kellie Jones, in the early stages of her career, researches and compiles the chronology for the catalogue.
Gilliam unveils Sculpture with a D (1982), commissioned by the Boston Mass Transit Authority, for the Davis Square Subway Station in Sommerville, Massachusetts, marking the first of his works to incorporate metal supports.
In 1983, Gilliam meets Annie Gawlak, a curator and art consultant based in Washington, D.C., with whom he begins a relationship with in 1986. An artist herself and former director of Middendorf Gallery in D.C., throughout their forty-year-long relationship, Gawlak champions Gilliam and becomes his trusted thought partner.
1986
Abstraction/Abstraction
Gilliam is invited to present a solo exhibition at Carnegie Mellon University Art Gallery, in Pittsburgh, where he is also a faculty member. He requests that other artists be invited to participate in the exhibition, resulting in the group show, Abstraction/Abstraction, which includes Emily Cheng, Sharon Gold, Jonathan Lasker, Kathleen Montgomery, Michael Mulhern, David Reed and Stephen Westfall.
In May of 1986, Gilliam gives the Commencement speech at the Memphis School of Art, ‘The Transformation of Nature through Nature’. The speech is republished multiple times.
Gilliam continues to work with printmaker and photographer Bill Weege, now at Tandem Press, in Madison, Wisconsin. Gilliam and Weege collaborate over many years, with Gilliam visiting the printshop every summer with his daughters. Together they experiment with innovative techniques and Gilliam produces large-scale prints.
1990
Entering the 1990s, Gilliam has retired from teaching and his three children grown and out of the house. Having just received an NEA grant, for the first time, Gilliam works full-time as an artist, continuing to experiment with printmaking and developing large-scale public commissions.
In 1990, he creates a large-scale print, Of Fireflies and Ferris Wheels (c. 1990), which exhibits internationally throughout the decade. He unveils several major large-scale commissions, including Jamaica Center Station Riders, Blue (1990), at the Jamaica Center train station in Queens, NY and Dihedral, which opens at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, NY, in 1996.
Gilliam also mounts solo museum exhibitions during the 90s, including Sam Gilliam at the American Craft Museum in New York (1991); Sam Gilliam: Construction at the Speed Art Museum (fka J.B. Speed Memorial Museum) in Louisville (1996), and Sam Gilliam in 3-D’, Kreeger Museum in Washington D.C., his first solo museum exhibition in D.C. since 1983.
Gilliam worked closely with his collaborator, master printer William Weege at Tandem Press to create Of Fireflies and Ferris Wheels (c. 1990), a new large-scale print. The work is printed on pelon fabric and spans 100 yards.
In 1991, Of Fire and Ferris Wheels is first presented at the Walker Hill Arts Center in Seoul, Korea. The contemporary art center is a predecessor of Art Center Nabi, a now defunct art museum focused on digital art. The work then visits Helsinki, Sweden, where it is presented as part of the in the Arts America Program at the United States Information Agency in 1992.
Perhaps one of the most breathtaking examples of the relationship between Gilliam’s works and their surrounding architecture, Of Fireflies and Ferris Wheels: Monstery Parallel sees the work installed in the Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen in Magdeburg, Germany during the spring of 1996, pictured here.
As an artist with critical success and an established reputation, both nationally and internationally, Gilliam receives honorary doctorate degrees from Northwestern University, University of Louisville, the Corcoran Gallery and School of Art, American University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Tampa.
Throughout the decade, Gilliam continues to produce public commissions on a massive scale.
In 1991 Gilliam completes Jamaica Center Station Riders, Blue, commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit commissions a new work by Gilliam for the Jamaica Center train station in Queens, NY. The work is a large, aluminum sculpture of geometric shapes painted in primary colors, mounted high outside on a wall above one of the entrances.
Gilliam’s commission for the La Guardia Airport in Queen’s New York is unveiled in 1996. Dihedral (pictured) is comprised of polychromed aluminum suspended on aircraft cables, and measures some 80 feet long and 30 feet high: the shape suggests the form of a bird or an airplane’s cockpit.
Commissioned by the Art in Architecture Program for the Fine Arts Collection of US General Services Administration, Gilliam completes Color of Medals in 1998, installed at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration. The work features multiple hinged panels in addition to shapes and colors inspired by iconography drawn from historical military medals.
2000
During the early 2000s, curator Jonathan P. Binstock develops Sam Gilliam: A Retrospective, a major survey of Gilliam’s work accompanied by a catalogue with a substantial essay penned by Binstock, charting his deep impact on the development of post-war abstract art. The exhibition travelled to the Speed Art Museum, the Telfair Museum in Savannah Georgia, and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston.
2010
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2020
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