| SAM GILLIAM |
Born in Tupelo Mississippi, in 1933, Sam Gilliam was educated at the University of Louisville, where he earned a B.A. in Fine Art and an M.A. in Painting. His richly-colored abstract paintings have been exhibited in solo shows at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1969), and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1971). In 2005, the Corcoran Gallery mounted a full-career retrospective of Gilliam’s work, which traveled to the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, and the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston. The subject of several major monographs, Gilliam’s work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Tate Modern, London, among many others.
Gilliam is best recognized for his innovative “draped” paintings of the late 1960s which established him as a major figure in American 20th-century art. His work has since ranged from economically painted evocations of color, light and space to complex, mixed-media sculptural constructions, remarkable both for their technical inventiveness and stylistic variety. Expansive, searching and multi-faceted, Gilliam’s art is above all characterized by the expressive power and beauty of its color.
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