Painter Sam Gilliam dies at 88

by time news


Lhe abstract art painter Gilliam, known for his colorful canvases left free from the frames on which they are usually attached, died on Saturday at the age of 88, two galleries that collaborated with him announced on Monday June 27. The artist, born in 1933 in the state of Mississippi and who was the first African-American to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1972, died at his home in Washington of kidney failure, according to the New York Times.

“Sam Gilliam was one of the giants of modernism,” said Arne Glimcher, the founder of the Pace gallery, quoted in the press release. “Sam embodied a vital spirit of freedom, achieved with courage, ferocity, sensitivity and poetry,” added David Kordansky, of the gallery of the same name.

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A colorful journey

It was at the end of the 1960s that Sam Gilliam, who had already painted his colored forms on folded canvases before stretching them on their frames, produced some of his most emblematic works, the Drapesby completely ridding his canvases of their wooden supports to let them fall freely from the ceiling or the walls.

“These revolutionary works (…) have changed the history of art”, write the gallerists. “Gilliam transformed the medium of painting and its relationship to the spatial and architectural context in which it is viewed. »

“1968 was a year of revelation and determination”, explained the artist, quoted by the press release. “Something was floating in the air and it was partly in this spirit that I painted the Drapes. Three of these paintings are currently exhibited at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, as part of the exhibition “La Couleur en fugue”, until August 29, 2022.

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