SAM GILLIAM / this is now

Sam Gilliam (1933–2022, Tupelo, Mississippi) was one of the great innovators of postwar American painting. Emerging from the Washington, D.C. art scene in the mid-1960s, he developed works that both expanded and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting. His formal breakthroughs culminated in the canonical Drape paintings, in which unstretched canvases were suspended from walls or ceilings, transforming both the medium of painting and the space it inhabited.

For Gilliam, an African American artist working in the nation’s capital during the height of the Civil Rights movement, these innovations carried social and cultural weight as well as aesthetic force. Throughout his career, Gilliam pursued experimentation as a guiding principle, drawing inspiration from the improvisational nature of jazz. His lyrical abstractions continued to evolve over decades, embracing an ever-expanding range of forms, materials, and moods.