Sam Gilliam
Offset Lithograph Warmly Inscribed to Renowned African American Arts Educator, 1988
Offset Lithograph Card
Hand written, signed and inscribed card with a warm personal message from the artist
Frame Included
Hand written, signed and inscribed offset lithograph card with a warm personal message from Sam Gilliam to Lindsay Waldorf Patterson.
Measurements:
Frame:
14 7/8 x 12 x 1/2 inches
Card:
8 x 5 inches
The inscription reads:
To Lindsay:
With Warmest Regards
Sam Gilliam
Lindsay Waldorf Patterson was an American English literature educator and author as well as a MacDowell Colony fellow (3 awards); Edward Albee Foundation fellow (2 awards); recipient award National Foundation on Arts & Humanities.
Hand signed on the front
Provenance:
From the estate of Lindsay Waldorf Patterson. Lindsay Waldorf Patterson was an American English literature educator and author as well as an MacDowell Colony fellow (3 awards); Edward Albee Foundation fellow (2 awards); recipient award National Foundation on Arts & Humanities.
Formerly an account executive, Harrison Advertising Agency, New York City, 1964; feature writer and columnist assistant to Langston Hughes, Associated Negro Press, 1965; special feature writer (film) Uptight,, Paramount Pictures, 1968; co-host Celebrity Hour program, Station WRVR-FM, New York City, 1974-1977; co-host Black Conversations program, Station WPIX-television, New York City, 1976-1979; assistant Professor of English, Queens College, Flushing, New York, since 1990. Adjunct Professor Afro-American & Caribbean literature, black theater, and expository writing Hunter College, New York City, 1974-1986. Adjunct Professor literature College of New Rochelle-Manhattan branch, 1986-1991.
Moderator short story seminar Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, 1986-1991. Adjunct Professor department academic skillsHunter College, 1988-1991. Speaker & consultant various New York City public schools.
Guest lecturer Columbia University, Kent State University, U. Iowa, New York University, Hunter College, Harvard University, Pennsylvania State University, U. Connecticut, Medgar Evers College, 100 Black Women, others.
Sam Gilliam Biography
Sam Gilliam (b. 1933, d. 2022) is 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. 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.
Gilliam has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions worldwide including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2022); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018); Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2011); J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, Louisville, KY (1996); Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris Branch, New York, NY (1993); The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY (1982); and Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (1971), among many other institutions. In 2021, Dia Art Foundation, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston made the historic joint acquisition of Gilliam’s important early work, the monumental installation Double Merge (1968), which was on view 2019–2022 at Dia Beacon in New York. Recent group exhibitions include Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (2024–2025); Edges of Ailey, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2024); Day for Night: New American Realism, organized by the Aïshti Foundation, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, Italy (2024); Abstraction after Modernism: Recent Acquisitions, Menil Collection, Houston, TX (2024); and American Voices and Visions: Modern and Contemporary Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. (2023). His work is included in over fifty permanent collections, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Tate Modern, London, England; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; and Art Institute of Chicago, IL.
