Untitled
Great Jones Alley
Sam Gilliam was an American abstract painter, sculptor, and arts educator born in 1933 (died in 2022). Born in Mississippi, and raised in Kentucky, Gilliam spent his entire adult life in Washington, D.C., eventually being described as the "dean" of the city's arts community. Originally associated with the Washington Color School, a group of Washington-area artists that developed a form of abstract art from color field painting in the 1950s and 1960s, Gilliam moved beyond the movement's core aesthetics of flat fields of color in the mid-60s by introducing both process and sculptural elements to his paintings.
He was known as an innovator. In his famous “Drape paintings,” he expanded upon Abstract Expressionism in entirely new ways. Suspending stretcherless lengths of painted canvas from the walls or ceilings of exhibition spaces, Gilliam transformed his medium and the contexts in which it was viewed. For 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 course in which experimentation has been the only constant. Inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, his lyrical abstractions continue to take on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials.
