Artist-in-Residence

Sam Gilliam

Several people gather around a large printmaking table. To the right is the artist, a tall Black man crossing his arms, smiling. At his right is a shorter white woman, Kippy Stroud, founder of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.
From left to right: Anne d’Harnoncourt, Homer Jackson, Tim VanCampen, Will Stokes, Jr., Lucile Michels, Sam Gilliam, and Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud, 1977. Archives, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia.

Celebrated for his expansion of postwar abstraction, Sam Gilliam elaborated on and disrupted the once-dominant Abstract Expressionist themes emerging from the New York School. Working in Washington, D.C. at the height of the civil rights movement, the artist’s physical transformations of painting were reflective of the dramatic sociopolitical changes occurring in the United States. 

Rather than conform to expectations to produce figurative, political art focused solely on Black experiences, Gilliam chose abstraction as a means of engaging in nuanced conversations around identity, race, and history. His artistic debut came in the late 1950s when names like Pollock and Johns dominated the art world. After a brief exploration of geometric abstract painting, Gilliam developed his seminal “Drape” paintings. As the name suggests, these works drape across the gallery instead of hanging in traditional frames. The move from flat canvases to hanging drop cloths dip-dyed with pigments transformed Gilliam’s paintings into objects—part-painting, part-sculpture, and part-installation—that uniquely occupied the viewer’s environment and redefined what a “painting” is. 

In the mid-late 1970s, Sam Gilliam produced several Philadelphia-specific works: first, a large-scale installation for the façade of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Seahorses (1975); and Philadelphia Soft (1977), a series of six linen and canvas works inspired by his time in the city that he created as one of The Fabric Workshop and Museum’s first Artists-in-Residence. Founded that same year, the workshop was focused on exploring the possibilities of a traditionally industrial process—screenprinting repeat yardage—as a new artform and provided contemporary artists with resources and materials for this exploration. During his time in residence, Gilliam employed FWM’s printing processes to produce the six related works, hand placing nineteen separate screens to create a layered, painterly surface. These pieces retain the physical characteristics of the unstretched and draped color field paintings for which Gilliam has become known, while utilizing a graphic mark-making approach characteristic of print. At the same time, the improvised and irregular use of so many screens resulted in related, but ultimately unique artworks—testaments to Gilliam’s subversion of both the industrial process and the aura of the masterpiece. 

Artist Bio

American, 1933–2022. Lived and worked in Washington, D.C. 

Emerging in Washington, D.C. in the 1960s, Sam Gilliam is best known for his innovations in color field painting. As a member of the Washington Color School, Gilliam’s work responded to abstract expressionist themes and utilized heavily layered and poured pigment. Receiving both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Louisville, KY, he taught high school art class while dedicating time to develop his painting practice. In 1972, Gilliam became the first Black man to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale (he returned in 2017). Gilliam has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and the Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, NY; The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland, among many others. In addition to The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, his work is in the permanent collection of numerous institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Tate Modern, London, UK; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA. In June 2022, the artist passed away in his hometown of Washington D.C., one month after the opening of Sam Gilliam: Full Circle, a lifetime retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.