b. Tupelo, Mississippi 1933

Lives and works in Washington, D.C.

Sam Gilliam is a color field painter and lyrical abstractionist artist. Gilliam, an African American, is associated with the Washington Color School, a group of Washington, D.C. area artists that developed a form of abstract art from color field painting in the 1950s and 1960s. His works have also been described as belonging to abstract expressionism and lyrical abstraction. He works on stretched, draped and wrapped canvas, and adds sculptural 3D elements. He is recognized as the first artist to introduce the idea of a draped, painted canvas hanging without stretcher bars around 1965. Recently, the artist has worked with different materials and mediums, including polypropylene, computer-generated imaging, handmade paper, steel and plastic.

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