Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam (born November 30, 1933 in Tupelo , Mississippi ) is an American visual artist and representative of Color Field Painting and lyrical abstraction .

Life

Gilliam studied at the University of Louisville , where he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1955 . After a break from military service, he continued his studies in 1958 and graduated in 1961 with a Master of Fine Arts . From 1964 he taught alongside his artistic work at various American art schools. Gilliam received eight honorary doctorates (1980 College of Arts and Sciences, University of Louisville; 1986 Memphis College of Art ; 1987 Atlanta College of Art ; 1990 Northwestern University , Evanston ; 1993 Corcoran College of Art and Design , Washington, DC ; 1996 American University , Washington, DC; 1997 University of Wisconsin – Madison ; 1999 University of Tampa ). In 1999, Gilliam was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in New York .

plant

The artist's early work was initially shaped by German Expressionism and the figurative painters of the San Francisco Bay . After moving to Washington in 1962, Gilliam met important representatives of the Washington Color School such as Robert Downing , Howard Mehring and Paul Reed . After intensive experiments with the soak stain technique developed by Helen Frankenthaler , very independent works were created in the following months, which were shown in the artist's first solo exhibition in 1964. The watercolors on folded or crumpled paper from 1967 met with great interest. A year later, Gilliam realized the first “Suspended Paintings”, color-soaked canvases that, for the first time in the history of the visual arts, hung from the ceiling of the room or draped on the walls. With this artistic pioneering achievement, Gilliam finally succeeded in positioning himself in the international art scene. A solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1971 and participation in the 36th Biennale in Venice marked 1972 significant artistic highlights.

In the following decades the compositions became more dynamic and the materials and techniques more diverse. He now also used wood, metal, stone and plastic in his pictures and assemblages. The artist's works can be found in the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art , the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum , New York, the National Gallery of Art , Washington, the Tate Modern , London, the Musée National d'Art Moderne , Paris, the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna and the Kunstmuseum Basel .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ nationalacademy.org: Living Academicians "G" / Gilliam, Sam, NA 1999 ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on June 23, 2015) 

Sources and literature

• Davis, Hugh M. (Ed.): Sam Gilliam. Indoor & Outdoor Paintings 1967-1978. With an essay by Jay Kloner. University Gallery, University of Massachusetts / Amherst, Sept 16 - Nov 5, 1978, Amherst, MA 1978.
• Young, Kenneth: Interview with Sam Gilliam, September 18, 1984, Washington DC (transcription) , Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
• Forgey, Benjamin: Interview with Sam Gilliam, 4. – 11. November 1989, Washington DC (transcription) , Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
• Binstock, Jonathan P .: Sam Gilliam: The Making of A Carreer, 1962-1973. Diss. University of Michigan 2000.
• Binstock, Jonathan P: Sam Gilliam: A Retrospective. Forewords by Walter Hopps and Jacquelyn D. Serwer. Corcoran Gallery of Art & University of California Press, Berkeley / Washington, DC 2005.
• Energy / experimentation. Black Artists and Abstraction 1964-1980. (Frank Bowling / Barbara Chase-Riboud / Ed Clark / Melvin Edwards / Fred Eversley / Sam Gilliam / Daniel LaRue Johnson / Tom Lloyd / Al Loving / Joe Overstreet / Howardena Pindell / Haywood Bill Rivers / Alma Thomas / Jack Whitten / William T. Williams). Studio Museum Harlem, New York 2006.