Benefit Prints
Sam Gilliam, Untitled, 1997
Sam Gilliam, Untitled, 1997, lithograph, handmade paper, and collé, 21½ x 22 in., edition of 50
Price
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About the Work
Sam Gilliam’s print is an original mixed-media construction that demonstrates the exceptional care in the selection and production of materials and the playful yet sophisticated sense of color and composition that enliven so many of his works. Untitled marks a return for Gilliam to the medium of paper, which he extensively explored during the 1970s. The print comprises several handmade elements, including a gestural pulp painting unique to each number in the edition. The image of the stamped relief printing that occupies the lower-right portion of the piece derives from a previous work, adding another layer of reference. Other segments are made of custom watermarked, handmade Japanese prints. The combination of these elements creates a work in which the hand of the artist is ever present, and the intimate relationship between artist and work is preserved.
Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and educated at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. He then moved east to Washington, DC, where in the late 1960s and early 1970s he garnered much recognition for his “suspended paintings.” These draped works liberated the canvas from the frame and challenged the customary separation between sculpture and painting. In the 1980s, Gilliam received a series of major public commissions, including one for the Boston Transit Authority, for which a large sculptural mural was created and installed at the Davis Square station. Success accompanied the artist into the next two decades. In 2005, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, opened Sam Gilliam: A Retrospective. Curated by Jonathan P. Binstock, the show traveled to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, closing in 2007 at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas. His most recent exhibition of new work, Sam Gilliam: Paintings, was held September 17–October 29, 2011, at Marsha Mateyka Gallery in Washington, DC.
Gilliam was actively involved in the preliminary stages of establishing CAA’s Professional Development Fellowship Program, for which he served as a juror for visual artists in 1996. He was also a member of the organization’s Board of Directors from 1986 to 1989.
The artist produced Untitled at the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper (renamed the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions in 2006), working closely with the master printer, Eileen N. Foti, and the master papermaker, Gail Deery.
Contact
For more information on benefit prints, please contact Hannah O’Reilly Malyn, CAA development associate, at 212-392-4435.
