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

“His mother encouraged him by providing sheets of paper and cardboard that he saw all around him — horse drawn-milk carts, ice carriages, junk haulers.”

Mary Schmidt Campbell

An excerpt from Schmidt Campbell’s detailed essay, “Sam Gilliam:A Life,” (“Sam Gilliam,” Phaidon, 2024).

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.

“My dad … he did everything: he was a farmer, a baseball pitcher, a deacon, a janitor. He was born in Mississippi, in the Delta, which is a very rich source of music – Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, all those great singers and gui- tarists. They made work songs.

The memory of my father became more meaningful when I became much older. I tend to think that he was a great guy. He was beautiful. Wonderful. Very strong. He said I asked too many questions. He is who I became. I always thought that being one of the youngest in the family, that I saw more, I saw it from a different position.”

Sam Gilliam

Quoted in Hans Ulrich Obrist, ‘A Conversation with Sam Gilliam’, 1 December 2019

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.

“I was lucky to go to a great school, the University of Louisville. I was part of the second Black class. I decided I wanted to be an artist, and I was determined. There was an art center off campus. The head of the art center was a Yale graduate, a portrait painter, Eugene Leake, who then became president of Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

My first professor was a design professor [Edgar Pillet], who also taught painting. He was from Paris, and he loved music. Louisville was where Count Basie was born and it was home to the Kentucky Derby. It was an amazing time. Paul Robeson came to speak, and there were very few Black students at the time. He said he wouldn’t speak without Black students, so they bussed in students from the Black college nearby.”

Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam quoted in Hans Ulrich Obrist, ‘A Conversation with Sam Gilliam’, 1 December 2019

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.

“I was in the ROTC, and I did basic training in Texas. We were stationed with Airborne troops and drilled by Airborne sergeants. After that I was quite lucky to be stationed in Japan. Japan was just marvelous. There were galleries and art stores, and a woodcut studio near the base. There was one person in our unit who did nothing but go to Kabuki theater. From what I had seen of the art world, I wasn’t sure if I still wanted to be an artist, but I knew I didn’t want to be a soldier. So, I grew up. I went back to school to do my thesis.”

Sam Gilliam

Gilliam quoted in Jennifer Samet, ‘Beer With a Painter’, Hyperallergic, 19 March 2016

“I first encountered Yves Klein while stationed with the army in Japan. There was a Klein exhibition in Tokyo. The Gutai group was being born, and I was in the army, and I thought nothing about whether I would be an artist or not. In fact, I probably thought that I would never be an artist. But Klein had an effect on me, and I thought about making art beyond the interiors that it is usually presented in, about making art more in the outside world.”

Sam Gilliam

Quoted in interview with Adrianna Campbell for Artforum, 2017

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.

“The professors from Europe were actually more involved in Black culture than the American professors. They were mostly Germans. Our visiting professor, Ulfert Wilke, had an interest in African sculpture. I figured the only way I was going to be an artist was to be his studio assistant.

I worked as a fellowship student in the university library and the art library. I showed all the slides to the art his- tory classes. I worked in the art library and got the books that professors needed to prepare for their lectures. There was nothing that kept me from reading them. So, I had two occupations’.

One of the good things about the University of Louisville was that most of the professors had come from Europe, and in particular Germany, as émigrés fleeing from Nazi Germany and World War II. For example, Edgard Pillet, who was a Parisian designer, painter, sculptor, printmaker, and a tapestry designer, among other things, and Charles Crodel, a printmaker and very important stained glass win- dow designer from the Bavarian State Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. I in fact did my thesis with Crodel, who even though he was known for his stained-glass window design, conceptually believed more in drawing in regard to constructing planes and then building volumes. His method of teaching figure drawing was first, for example, to draw a silhouette and then determine the volume by layers of cross strokes, and that was within the tradition of drawing that I learned. I soon realized that a painter like Tintoretto did the same; creating flat back planes before moving.”

Sam Gilliam

Gilliam quoted in Tom McGlynn, ‘Sam Gilliam with Tom McGlynn’, The Brooklyn Rail, September 2019

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.

Between 200,000 and 500,000 demonstrators march down Constituition Avenue during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Washington DC, August 28, 1963. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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.

Sam Gilliam, 1966 On the occasion of the First World Festival of Black Arts (April 1-24, 1966) in Dakar, Senegal Photo by Geoffrey Clements Courtesy Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. and New York

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.

“When I arrived [in Washington, D.C.], I discovered that the city had far more interesting and diverse artists living and working there than I had imagined. On P Street, for instance, in a section where most of the contemporary galleries came to be, I discovered Sam Gilliam’s paintings at the Jefferson Place Gallery. They were lyrical abstract stained and painted works unlike any I had ever seen. As the artists and I came to know one another, I discovered that we both loved the work of John Coltrane, the great jazz tenor saxophone player. I later learned that the melodic structure that Coltrane often used, which he called ‘sheets of sound’ was a significant influence for Gilliam’s work.”

Walter Hopps

Quoted by Jonathan Binstock in Sam Gilliam: A Retrospective, p. 7

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 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.

“Recent social pressure has focused on the ethnic exclusion practiced by American cultural institutions. As a result some of these institutions have attempted hasty redress in the form of ill-conceived exhibitions. For a major museum, in 1971, to attempt a definitive survey of the works of the African American artist in the United States is important and precedent setting.”

John Dowell, Sam Gilliam, Daniel Johnson, Joe Overstreet, Melvin Edwards, Richard Hunt, and William T. Williams,

Excerpt from op-ed published in Artforum, May 1971

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.

“In 1972, I was in Venice to install my work Baroque Cascade, which measured ten by seventy-five feet when undraped. I was there alongside Ron Davis, Diane Arbus, Keith Sonnier, Jim Nutt, Richard Estes, and Walter Hopps. I went over early to assist with the installation. I was particularly excited to show my work because of my desire to connect painting and architecture.”

Sam Gilliam

Quoted in interview with Adrianna Campbell for Artforum, 2017

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

Gilliam has his second solo institutional exhibition in New York at the Studio Museum in Harlem, curated by the museum’s Director, Mary Schmidt Campbell.

He becomes involved in lobbying for the rights of artists in D.C. and co-founds the Washington Coalition of Artists together with Lindsey Makepeace, Rockne Krebs, Lizette Brennan and Sheila Ishan.

He begins teaching painting at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he will be a member of the faculty until 1985.

Gilliam receives the Mayor’s Art Award for the District of Columbia.

Gilliam is commissioned by the Boston Mass Transit Authority to create Sculpture with a “D” (1982) for the Davis Square Subway station in Sommerville, Massachusetts.

In 1983, Gilliam meets Annie Gawlak, a curator and art consultant in Washington, D.C., with whom he begins a relationship in 1986. Gawlak opens G. Fine Art in 2001, which becomes an important and influential contemporary art gallery focused on supporting younger artists in Washington, D.C. Gilliam will occasionally exhibit his work at G. Fine Art throughout its tenure. Gawlak and Gilliam work closely together on exhibitions, sometimes writing together on the conceptual themes of Gilliam’s painting.

In 1984, Gilliam receives the Distinguished Award for Pioneering in the Arts from American Black Artists, Inc.

“My work consists of solids and veils: the union of solids, or metal forms, seen as volumes against a raked and grooved paint surface. It is constructed painting, in that it crosses the void between object and viewer, to be part of the space in front of the picture pane. It represents an act of pure passage. The surface is no longer the final plane of the work. It is instead the beginning of an advance into the theatre of life.”

–Sam Gilliam with Annie Gawlak

1986

Abstraction/Abstraction

In 1985, Gilliam begins teaching at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where he will teach until 1989. He spends significant time in Pittsburgh but does not relocate. He becomes close to many local artists and jazz musicians, among them sculptor Thaddeus Mosley, with whom he will enjoy a lifelong friendship.

In 1986, 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, Gilliam gives the Commencement speech at the Memphis School of Art, ‘The Transformation of Nature through Nature’. The speech is republished multiple times. Gilliam receives the President’s Award from the Maryland College of Art and Design, Silver Spring, as well as the Order of Merit Award from the Alumni Association at the University of Louisville and an Honorary Doctorate from the Atlanta College of Art.

“I first met Sam about 1972 when he did a show at a little gallery not far from the Carnegie. The gallery was called The King Pitcher Gallery. They had an after party at the hostess’ home, and that’s where I first met Sam and Dorothy Gilliam. We hit it off right away; we were both talking about the circumstances of us being the only Afro-Americans at this party, and we kept in touch. I told him I had gotten his Art in America cover magazine about two years ago. I’d been following his work and he wanted to see what I was doing and we became fast friends. And then after he started teaching graduate painting at CMU, he would come in on Wednesday and leave Friday morning.

At that time there were a lot of clubs and a lot of good music playing and we’d go to hear anyone who was playing in town, and we’d also have dinner. Sometimes I’d cook at my house and then after his marriage dissolved, I started going down to D.C., since I was single. And I’d go by and we’d go out and particularly when he had a show up, I’d go down and see the show. I saw most of the shows that he was doing then.

We talked a great deal about art and about people, friends of his like Jack Whitten?, who was slightly discouraged because he wasn’t getting any attention back in those days. And Sam told him, “You just keep painting. You’re doing great and just keep piling them up. People will notice it for sure.” Anyhow, because he always encouraged me and I encouraged him, I remember one time when he was preparing for a show in San Francisco or somewhere, and I said, “Wow, it really looks great.” He says, “Can’t you see how worried I am? It doesn’t look great to me.” And so we were sort of laughing, and that pretty much was us, encouraging each other and being in touch. When people were down on Sam because he wasn’t doing the type of painting a lot of people thought he should be doing, back in the Black painter’s movement, I would say, “Well, you just got to do what you want to do because that’s what I’m doing. I don’t care what anybody thinks.” And so that pretty much sums up our basic friendship and encouragement and so forth.

I always thought that Sam was one of the finest painters in the country. He never really got the dues, but that didn’t matter. I think the students and other people recognized his talent and his individuality and also his persistence because when Sam was out there as an abstract painter, there weren’t many Afro-American painters in the 1970s who were known for abstraction. And so he was one of the people that were holding forth on his own ideas and had the courage and integrity to just be Sam Gilliam, which I admired him for.”

– Thaddeus Mosley, 2023

“Thad is the most beautiful artist you’ll want to see. He used to be a postman and then a jazz musician and critic. He is actually the soul of Pittsburgh … I knew Thad before I came to Pittsburgh – he invited me to the city. He just knew everybody. When I taught at Carnegie Mellon, Thad and I spent more time together. I taught there for five years, mainly because they were being penalized for not allowing Black people to be a part of the university, so they had to hire a teacher who would also be paid a commensurate salary. If I ever got locked out, which I did sometimes at university, I’d go spend the night with Thad. I wrote an essay that got him into his first gallery. That was the beautiful thing about Pittsburgh when the steel mills died: there was the Mattress Factory, there was a celebration of Warhol, there was the Carnegie and the Carnegie International, and then there was Thad. We talk all the time. Thad is the future.”

– Sam Gilliam

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.

It is said at this time in 1986 there is a lull in art, that the thing that was sought in Post WWII years by many immigrants coming here has been lost. It is said that even the sense of this land as honored by the Hudson River School is lost from American art. What has come to replace this great inheritance is known as rampant commercialism and production. It is suggested that there is not a transcendence between the public and the art, that only a special group counts. It sounds like Sodom and Gomorrah reigns in this mythical land with the gigantic volcano. Many of us have come to recognize the absence of the Centaur, the lowering of the light. But do we recognize more specifically, the possibility of losing the nature of humanity in this way? Do we realize that there is a need for the artist to act as an artist? Where does this come from?

I guess the most immediate answer is contained in something I have already expressed earlier in this speech. That is of the professor who even though on the run, made drawings, who even though imprisoned kept art alive in his head and who upon release went around the world to make sure that the world was still there, who created the mighty Centaur as a symbol of himself, as an artist to remind himself that the artist was still there.

[…] Thus I want to say to you, as the artist, you are nature. I must say that you as the artist must always make new work. You as the artist must keep the Centaur present. You as the artist must keep the fire blazing.

Sam Gilliam

In 1987, curator David Driskell invites Gilliam to present a solo exhibition at the inaugural exhibitions of the Anacostia Community Museum, in Washington, D.C. Always interested in supporting the broader artist community, Gilliam requests that Driskell expand the exhibition and they work together to invite fellow artists Martha Jackson-Jarvis, Keith Morrison and William T. Williams to participate.

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.

In 1989, Gilliam receives a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Grant and retires from full-time teaching.

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.

So Gilliam is in many ways a blues man. He is a farmer of the untilled “bottoms” of rich sonorous soil refined and polished to visual perfection. His art sings the blues that were blue before Picasso knew that African art contained a blues formula, or even before the Cubist and modernist experimenters bothered to examine the shrines of Gilliam’s African ancestors, and once having been informed then “invented” assemblages and installations. So I caution the viewer; “do not go gently into that good night” of Gilliam’s artistic statement hoping to find only a second-generation Washington Color Painter or an abstractionist preoccupied with Euclidean geometry and expressionist and neo-plastic patterns. There is in the words of the untutored bluesman “more to be seen there than what meets the eye” in Gilliam’s art. Here one sees the raw account of impromptu inventiveness associated with change and the physical reaction one makes of it to the visual world.

David Driskell

In 1990, Gilliam receives an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

In 1991, The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit commissions a new work by Gilliam for the Jamaica Center train station in Queens, NY. Jamaica Center Station Riders, Blue is a large aluminium sculpture of geometric shapes painted in primary colours and mounted high outside on a wall above one of the entrances.

Working closely with master printer Bill Weege at Tandem Press, Gilliam creates a new large-scale print. Of Fireflies and Ferris Wheels (c. 1990) is printed on pelon fabric and spans 100 yards; it is first exhibited in Seoul and later in Helsinki.

In 1992, Gilliam receives an Honorary Doctor of Arts & Letters from the University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky.

In 1993, Gilliam receives an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Corcoran Gallery and School of Art.

In 1996, Gilliam’s commission for the La Guardia Airport in Queen’s New York is unveiled. Dihedral is comprised of polychromed aluminium 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.

He also receives an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the American University, Washington, D.C. And in 1997, Gilliam receives an Honorary Doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In 1998, Gilliam’s solo exhibition at the Kreeger Museum in Washington, D.C. features a series of newly commissioned paintings and is the artist’s first solo museum show in Washington since his exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1983.

Commissioned by the Art in Architecture Program for the Fine Arts Collection of US General Services Administration, Color of Medals (1998), is installed at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration. The work features multiple hinged panels in addition to shapes and colours inspired by iconography drawn from historical military medals.

Gilliam receives an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Tampa, Florida.

2000

In 2001, Gilliam is inducted into the National Academy Of Design. In 2002, Gilliam collaborates with the Washington Ballet’s artistic director Septime Webre to create a complex suspended scenography for the company’s production, Journey Home, which is performed at the Kennedy Center and later tours.

In 2005, A major US touring retrospective exhibition is organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, curated by Jonathan Binstock, its Curator of Contemporary Art. The exhibition is accompanied by a significant scholarly catalogue and reintroduces audiences to the breadth of Gilliam’s practice over five decades.

In 2006, Gilliam is named University of Louisville Alumnus of the Year. In 2007, Gilliam receives Mississippi Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts. The Art in Architecture Program of the Fine Arts Collection of the US General Services Administration (GSA) commissions Gilliam to create a new work for the Census Bureau Headquarters. Census (2007), is painted on sheets of birch plywood, cut into individual pieces and joined with piano hinges. It is the fourth and final commission Gilliam will produce for the GSA.

2010

In 2011, Gilliam’s new public art commission, From a Model to a Rainbow, is installed in Washington, D.C.’s Metro underpass at 4th and Cedar Street, near Takoma Station, as part of D.C. Metro’s Art-in-Transit Program.

In 2012, Rashid Johnson, an artist two generations younger than Gilliam, is a long-standing admirer of Gilliam’s work and includes the artist in a group show he curates at South London Gallery. Johnson shares this admiration with his Los Angeles gallerist, David Kordansky and the two visit Gilliam’s studio and are deeply moved by the artist’s expansive, decades-long painting practice and his continued prolific production. Gilliam joins David Kordansky Gallery, where his first solo exhibition is curated by Johnson. His work is also featured by Kordansky at Frieze Masters, London, with an in-depth presentation of his early works. The presentation receives great critical acclaim internationally and Gilliam begins to experience an elevation in his career which results in a significant increase in exhibition invitations, institutional acquisitions, scholarly criticism and rising auction records.

In 2015, Gilliam receives the inaugural Medal of Arts Lifetime Achievement Award by the US State Department for his longtime contributions to Art in Embassies and cultural diplomacy.

In 2016, Gilliam is commissioned to produce a new work for the grand opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History. The large-scale painting, Yet Do I Marvel (Countee Cullen) (2016) references Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen’s poem on the resilient nature of creativity.

In 2018, Gilliam’s major European retrospective ‘The Music of Color. Sam Gilliam 1967–1973’, opens at Kunstmuseum Basel in June, coinciding with the international art fair, Art Basel. The exhibition is seen as a significant breakthrough for the artist, (re)introducing the breadth of his practice in painting and sculpture over more than six decades to international audiences.

Gilliam marries longtime partner Annie Gawlak.

He receives the Archives of American Art Medal, New York, New York.

In 2019. Gilliam joins Pace Gallery, marking the first time he is represented by a New York gallery. Owner Arne Glimcher is of the same generation and he and Gilliam swiftly form a deep friendship – they speak daily and visit often.

From 2018–2022, Gilliam is prolific in his production of new work. He continues to experiment, creating a new series of sculptures composed of laminated birch plywood, dyed and stacked alongside new series of large-scale bevelled-edge paintings and monochromatic watercolour paintings on washi paper.

Despite physical challenges, Gilliam pursues larger scale works that require physical endurance and strength. He is supported by studio assistants whom he trains to help maneuver mark-making materials in tandem with the movements of his own arms and hands.

I found myself discussing Sam’s work with Rashid Johnson over late-night drinks, a conversation that lasted well into the early morning hours. At the time, Rashid was not represented by my gallery, but it was through our shared love and respect for Sam’s practice that a bridge was formed between us. Sam was a bridge in a myriad of other ways too. He conjured the daring spirit and divine power of John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and Pharoah Sanders – the jazz heavyweights of exploration and improvisation. Sam was an architect of color whose vision propelled him into cosmic realms where experimentation and the moral compass provided by brave beauty were the only constants.

In 2012, Rashid, Mike Homer, and I decided to find Sam and propose an exhibition of his work. At that first visit to Sam’s Washington, D.C. studio – the first of many over the years – he responded to our proposal with what we thought was laughter, but soon realized were tears of joy. He quipped, “What took you so long?” and then we all cried together. For me, it was the beginning of an incredible adventure and collaboration rooted in love, art, and friendship.

David Kordansky, 2022

Sam was like a giant. This is an artist who had exhibited in the most important venues in the world, whose work had been written about and discussed in some of the most critical of circles, whose ideas has been explored and examined and interrogated by artists and critics for the duration of the time he was making it. I think sometimes the art world is shortsighted in that it doesn’t necessarily really understand its own canonical agency. Sam Gilliam has always been a giant of abstract painting. He’s one of the most innovative artists to ever create a picture. And I think that from the time he started making paintings until it ended, he was an enormous influence to a lot of people, and it’s not a recent phenomenon by any stretch of imagination. My interest in Sam Gilliam came from the fact that Sam Gilliam was already an enormous artist in my eyes. It wasn’t the opportunity to introduce him, it was the opportunity to collaborate with him that I was interested in

Rashid Johnson, 2023

The same year as Sam’s Venice show [1972], I met him for the first time at an opening for another mutual friend, the artist Kenneth Noland, at the André Emmerich Gallery in New York. I was younger than Sam, still in my early thirties, and I was immediately impressed by the fierce intelligence and magnetic presence of this tall, handsome individual. Even then, as a relatively young artist, he wore his independence and self-confidence on his sleeve. He was a D.C. figure – already recognized as an important member of the Washington Color School together with Noland – and fiercely proud of his association with his chosen city, where he would live and work for more than six decades.

We were from the same generation and shared the same fundamental understanding of the power and possibilities of abstraction. In recent years, I’ve cherished the experience of visiting Sam in his studio, often experiencing goosebumps when I walk in and encounter a fresh group of paintings. I’ve rarely had such an experience in an artist’s studio. It reminded me of visiting Rothko in my twenties. I think Sam’s recent works may be some of the greatest abstract paintings ever made. His experiments with color and surface are right up there with the achievements of Rothko and Pollock.

Arne Glimcher, 2020

The artist Sam Gilliam in his studio in Washington on May 17, 2018. Gilliam, a pioneering abstract painter best known for his lusciously stained Drape paintings that took his medium more fully into three dimensions than any other artist of his generation, and who in 1972 became the first Black artist to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, died on Saturday, June 25, 2022, at his home in Washington. He was 88. (Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times)

2020

In 2020, Gilliam’s first solo exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York takes over the ground-floor galleries of both Chelsea spaces and features multiple new bodies of work, from stained wooden sculptures and wall works to new watercolour monochromes. Here Gilliam presents a suite of large scale bevelled-edge paintings that mark the start of a new series and prolific final chapter. Despite opening during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is widely attended and receives many positive reviews.

In 2022, Gilliam is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Gilliam opens his first major museum survey exhibition in the United States since 2017, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. on 25 May. He presents his newest body of work, a series of tondos, acrylic on circular wood panels with laminated bevelled-edge frames, alongside the historic black painting Rail, 1977. The group exhibition, ‘Melvin Edwards, Sam Gilliam, and William T. Williams: Epistrophy’ at Pace Gallery in April marks the final exhibition of the trio in their lifetimes. The State Department acquires a major late painting and installs it in the lobby of their Washington, D.C. offices.

Gilliam passes away at his home on 25 June, from renal failure. He is 88 and survived by his wife Annie Gawlak; three daughters from his first marriage, Stephanie Gilliam, Melissa Gilliam and Leah Franklin; three sisters; and three grandchildren.