Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam Handmade Paper "Untitled #34" Acrylic. Signed & Dated

1975

In 2016 the Dennos Museum in Traverse City, Michigan, in homage to the very first exhibition in the Zimmerman Sculpture Court, installed the first two paintings by the former Michig...

"Dropout" is one of the monoprints that Joyce Nagel so enjoyed creating. This monoprint is a one-off abstract print. The arrangement of shapes and colors p...

"Earthcore" is an abstract of a familiar image ... a view of earth sliced in half usually as an explanation of the many layers of spaceship earth. This print is more than its title. It is rich in its depth of color and texture. Upon close inspection there is much activity on the surface which continually adds to its visual complexity. The name given to this print process is “Collagraph” It is made by glueing different materials to cardboard and creating a kind of collage. During the inking process the ink will rub off surfaces that are smooth or higher and stay on surfaces that hold more ink, at edge and at lower points thus creating the image. To protect the plate through the printing process it’s sealed with one or more layers of shellac. A collagraph plate is quite sensitive and will be deformed by the pressure of the printing press. Joyce Tilley Nagel...

"#24-80D Color Climb" is an exemplary work of Paul E. Maxwell's "stencil casting" works. This abstract but grid-like work employs a thickly textured and layered surface that has also...

The work of Sam Gilliam is included in over fifty public collections, including those of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, ...

With its extra-large dimension and joyful composition this painting by American artist Martha Holden is a rare piece. It is a contemporary abstract that ...

Sam Gilliam (1933–2022) is beloved as one of the 20th century's most important abstract artists. He was a true innovator in the evolution of American abstraction. Several groundbreak...

Sam Gilliam Buoy Landscape IV, 1982 Color relief print, etching, screenprint, drypoint, aquatint and roulette all from deeply etched copper plates, on handmade wove paper 31 1/2 × 24 inches Hand signed and numbered 3/25 in graphite pencil Hand-signed by artist, Signed by artist, numbered, and dated in pencil and blind-stamped by printer-publisher on lower right, titled in pencil on lower left, recto Unframed with elegant deckled edges Rare vintage intaglio and relief, all from deeply etched copper plates. Other works from this series are in the permanent collections of major museums & institutions like the Smithsonian, so they are quite scarce on the open market. Steven M. Andersen (Printer) Philip Barber (Printer) Hang Nguyen (Printer) Stephanie Nowack (Printer) Michael Reid (Printer) Daniel Rounds (Printer) Vermillion Editions Limited (Publisher) Sam Gilliam Biography: Sam Gilliam was one of the great innovators in postwar American painting. He emerged from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid 1960s with works that elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting. A series of formal breakthroughs would soon result in his canonical Drape paintings, which expanded upon the tenets of 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. As an 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 pursued a pioneering course in which experimentation was the only constant. Inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, his lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials. In addition to a traveling retrospective organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 2005, Sam Gilliam was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1971); The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1982); Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris Branch, New York (1993); J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, Louisville, Kentucky (1996); Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2011); and Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018), among many other institutions. A semi-permanent installation of Gilliam’s paintings opened at Dia:Beacon in August 2019. His work is included in over fifty public collections, including those of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Art Institute of Chicago. Sam Gilliam, Green April, 1969, acrylic on canvas, 98 x 271 x 3 7/8 inches (248.9 x 688.3 x 9.8 cm), Collection of Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland, Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, photography by Lee Thompson...