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Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam
Along the Canal, 1998 (two views)
acrylic on birch plywood with piano hinges
33 x 26 x 9 inches

Sam Gilliam's work first gained national prominence in the late 1960's with the debut of his dramatically innovative drape paintings. Since that time, he has had a long illustrious career, which has included numerous awards, grants and important public commissions. His paintings are in major museum collections including the Metropolitan, MOMA and the Whitney, in New York; Art Institute of Chicago, Menil Collection, Tate Gallery, London, Musee d'Arte Moderne,Paris, and all the major museums in Washington, DC.

Sam Gilliam's most recent museum exhibition was at the Kreeger Museum in Washington. The following excerpts are from the exhibition catalogue:

"Gilliam's recent work continues to express his fascination with structured improvisation. He is now creating vividly colored three-dimensional constructions of acrylic on birch plywood, often with collage elements.

...These new paintings are as complex technically as they are spatially. Gilliam begins by staining sheets of plywood with acrylic and polymer paints, sometimes in a gel medium that creates a translucent, almost glassy surface. The sheets are then cut up and cut out

... The parts are then hinged back together on either side of a stable center, creating wings in the manner of medieval altarpieces. ...Gilliam has always worked in series; his current paintings are no exception.

...Working in series allows him to explore chromatic and compositional relationships not only within a painting, but between several paintings in a suite.

...Collage has likewise been a consistent feature of Gilliam's work over the years. Typically the artist has pieced together the cut-ups of his own paintings.

...Like Matisse's cut-outs, Gilliam's paintings aspire at once to chromatic and compositional intricacy and to material and technical invention. Playful but serious, they embody a commitment to modernism

...They are a celebration of artistic freedom, of the power and the primacy of the individual imagination: this is one of the fundamental articles of modernist faith".**

**Gilliam in 3-D, catalogue essay by John Beardsley, The Kreeger Museum, Oct 16, 1998 - Jan. 2, 1999.

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