TO THE CHAPTER INVISIBLE
Sam Gilliam, Jr. 1933–2022 Renowned Abstract Painter, Educator, U.S. Army
By Aaron Williams
P ainter and artist Sam Gilliam (Alpha Omicron 1953) entered the Chapter Invisible on June 25, 2022, at age 88. Gilliam’s career crossed decades and mediums, using paint, draped canvas, and plastics to help influence numerous schools of art. He was the last surviving artist as- sociated with D.C.’s influential Wash- ington Color School, an art movement focused on pigment and hue qualities. News of Gilliam’s passing reverber- ated through the art world and beyond but held special significance in his cho- sen hometown of D.C. He taught art at McKinley High School and showed his work extensively in galleries around the city. “We mourn the passing of the leg- endary artist and person Sam Gilliam,” Dorothy Kosinski, Vradenburg Director and CEO of the Phillips Collection, said in a statement. “From the moment Marjorie Phillips invited him to host his first museum exhibition in 1967 to today, The Phillips Collection has cherished our special relationship with him. I deeply admire and celebrate his powerful impact.”
The seventh of eight children, Sam Gilliam, Jr., was born on November 30, 1933, in Tupelo, MS, to Sam, Sr., a railroad worker, and Estery, a maternal engineer. As a child, Gilliam started painting, and his teachers encouraged his artistic pursuits. Gilliam grew up in Louisville, KY where he graduated in 1951 from Central High School. He earned a B.A. degree in fine art in 1955 from the University of Louisville, where he also held his first solo art exhibition. Gilliam entered the U.S. Army in 1956 and served for two years. Following his discharge, he returned to the University of Louisville, earning an M.A. degree in painting in 1961. In 1963, artist Thomas Downing intro- duced Gilliam to the Washington Color School, defined by bold colors. Two years later, Gilliam contributed his innovation to the school by displaying unframed painted canvases, which al- lowed the work to flow naturally with the architecture of the display space. In the 1960s, Gilliam became the first artist to experiment with painting a canvas and displaying it draped rather than stretched on a frame. His many draped paint- ings became his signature for the next
decade, arranged hanging from ceilings, gathered in swaths, or bunched into shapes that straddled a line between painting and sculpture. In later years, Gilliam experimented with other styles, including collage, quilt-style, and round tondo paintings. His art was displayed at venues includ- ing the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1972, he became the first Black art- ist to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale cultural exhibition. In 2022, a retrospective of Gilliam’s work opened at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Gilliam received honorary degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Louisville; a Norman W. Harris Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago; two National Endowment of the Arts Awards; and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Gilliam’s marriage to Dorothy Butler ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Annie Gawlak, his three daughters, Stephanie, Melissa, and Leah, from his first marriage, three grandchildren and three sisters, Lizzie Jane, Lillie, and Clenteria.
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