Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam is an American artist and Color Field painter, associated with both the Washington Color School and the Lyrical Abstraction movement. During the 1960s, he began experimenting with folding and draping canvases, creating innovative works which became known as his signature “drape paintings.” These large-scale, brightly colored works were regarded as a major step forward for the development of abstract art. Gilliam is also a committed educator and has said, “Whether I am teaching or making art, the process is fundamentally the same: I am creating.” He was born in Tupelo, MI, on November 30, 1933, and graduated from the University of Louisville with a BFA in 1955. He taught first at Washington public schools and later at the Maryland Institute College of Art, the University of Maryland, and Carnegie Mellon. In 2005, a major retrospective of his work was held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. His works are also held in The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Tate Modern in London. He continues to live and work in Washington, D.C.