Sam Gilliam, Red, 1999. acrylic on birch plywood construction with aluminum frame 50 1/4 x 75 x 3 in. Collection of Nancy Nickerson and Stephen Frietch. Photo: Mark Gulezian/QuickSilver.
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LOUISVILLE.- The Speed Art Museum presents the exhibit Sam Gilliam: Retrospective through September 3, 2006. This exhibition surveys the accomplished career of African-American artist Sam Gilliam. A celebrated painter who began his career as an art student at the University of Louisville, Gilliam now lives and works in Washington, D.C. He has created many styles and forms of abstract painting, including his bevel-edge and suspended paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s, black paintings of the late 1970s, hinged wood constructions of the 1990s, and monochromatic “Slats” of recent years. Acclaimed for his use of saturated color and his highly improvisational, spontaneous technique, Gilliam is regarded as one of the most important and inventive colorists of the last thirty years.
Sam Gilliam (b. Tupelo, Mississippi) is an African American color field painter associated with the Washington Color School and Abstract Expressionism. He works on stretched, draped, and wrapped canvas, and adds sculptural 3D elements. Lately, he has worked with polypropylene, computer generated imaging, metallic and iridescent acrylics, hand-made paper, aluminum, steel, and plastic.
Gilliam received his B.A. in fine art and his M.A. in painting from the University of Louisville in Kentucky. He has had many commissions, grants, awards, exhibitions and honorary doctorates. He lives in Washington D.C. and has a studio in the historical Shaw neighborhood. A major retrospective of Gilliam’s work was held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2005. He was named the 2006 University of Louisville Alumnus of the Year.
