We are deeply saddened by the passing of Sam Gilliam. As @robertasmithnyt writes in the @nytimes, Gilliam was “best known for his lusciously stained Drape paintings that took his medium more fully into three dimensions than any other artist of his generation.”
Born in Mississippi, Gilliam grew up in Kentucky, before moving to Washington, DC, where he lived until his passing. Gilliam worked in various media to create abstract artworks that pushed and defied boundaries of shape, color and texture. He was likely best known for presenting paintings without the limitations of stretcher bars, freeing his canvasses from such binding restrictions, and instead draping them on the wall or from the ceiling. As an African-American artist in the nation’s capital at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, this was not merely an aesthetic proposition; it was a way of defining art’s role in a society undergoing dramatic change. Gilliam subsequently pursued a pioneering career in which experimentation remained the only constant. Inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, his lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials. Gilliam’s work is included in over fifty public collections. Among his numerous distinctions, Gilliam was the first Black artist to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale in 1972.
Gilliam’s permanent #MTAarts artwork “Jamaica Center Station Riders, Blue” was installed in 1991 at Jamaica Ctr-Parsons/Archer (E,J,Z) station. The wall-mounted piece, a painted aluminum sculpture, consists of two elements, a large ellipse and an armature that holds it. The sculpture was a natural progression from Gilliam’s signature Drape paintings into sculptural form, where aluminum has taken the place of a canvas. As Gilliam described of the work, the sculpture “calls to mind movement, circuits, speed, technology, and passenger ships...the colors used in the piece... refer to colors of the respective subway lines. The predominant use of blue provides one with a visual solid in a transitional area that is near subterranean.”
Our sincere condolences to Annie and to Sam’s children and their families. He was a great artist that will be dearly missed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/27/arts/sam-gilliam-dead.html
A brilliant colorist, he hung his canvases from ceilings in great curves and loops, or pinned them, gathered, to walls, taking his medium in
