Sam Gilliam: Selections

A look into the exhibition Sam Gilliam: Selections, on view at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art Feb 21, 2021 - Aug 15, 2021 www.ringling.o...
Thanks to the primarily local collectors who graciously agreed to lend their works. Support for this exhibition was provided, in part, by The Community Foundation of Sarasota County and the Bob and Diane Roskamp Endowment.
About the exhibition:
Sam Gilliam is one of the most important abstract artists working today. He will have a career retrospective, at the age of 87, in 2022 at the Smithsonian Institution Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. Known for his experimental exploration of materials and constant invention, Gilliam first came to critical attention in the 1960s as a later member of the Washington Color School artists. To emancipate his art from constraints, Gilliam infused his appreciation of blues and jazz improvisation to be conceptualized in abstraction. His radical freedom to express spontaneity when working with materials created the first of his important “drape” paintings in the late 1960s that he would continue to explore throughout his career. By removing the canvas from the traditional stretcher, Gilliam created innovative work that was both painting and sculpture. His installation of the “drape” works filled galleries with painted canvases suspended off the walls or from the ceilings and often draped over objects such as sawhorses or ladders. These pieces encouraged improvisation because they could not be hung in the same manner twice.
Images by Lunardi Photography