Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi and began his artistic career in elementary school. He studied at the University of Louisville, and holds a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from there. In 1962, he moved to Washington, D.C. where he began teaching in high school. His early paintings were dark and brooding, mostly figural abstractions, showing the influence of the German Expressionists. After his move to Washington, his paintings became airier, his colors clearer and brighter. In the 1960s he travelled to New York, where the works of both Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, especially their work with color, impressed him.

In 1967 he left teaching to work in the studio. He began experimenting with staining wet unprimed canvases, allowing the colors to blend and bleed. He was interested in process and the spontaneous nature of the free-flowing pigments.

Eventually, he dispensed with frames as support. He began draping and folding his large canvases, refolding and knotting them, improvising to achieve the final effect. Later he experimented with pieces of thickly painted material, which he cut out in geometric shapes and rearranged. His present work involves the use of computer-generated images, and he continues to work in Washington. He holds two National Endowment for the Arts awards, fellowships from the Washington Gallery of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Foundation, and an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Louisville.