HOUSTON, TX.- This winter, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston will present Sam Gilliam: a retrospective, the first full-career survey for the important abstract artist Sam Gilliam and the most comprehensive presentation of his work to date. Organized and circulated by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Sam Gilliam: a retrospective will be on view in Houston from January 27 to May 6, 2007. Concurrently, the Museum also will present two exhibitions from its acclaimed Perspectives series: the first solo museum exhibitions for artists Robert Pruitt and Francesca Fuchs. Perspectives 154: Robert Pruitt will be on view from December 15, 2006 to February 18, 2007. Perspectives 155: Francesca Fuchs will be on view from February 23 to April 29, 2007.

“The distinguished career of Sam Gilliam provides an inspiring counterpoint to emerging artists Robert Pruitt and Francesca Fuchs, whose first museum exhibitions we’re proud to present in conjunction with this retrospective. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is committed to supporting a wide range of emerging and established artists, from the poetic nature of Gilliam’s color-infused canvases, to the humorous critical stance of Pruitt’s installations, to the complex emotional content inherent in Fuchs’ portraits,” said Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Director Marti Mayo. “These distinct voices all share a strong personal viewpoint that makes them especially significant to our international, national, and regional audiences.”

In 1968, Gilliam revolutionized painting by discarding the wooden stretchers that always had determined a painting’s shape to instead drape and suspend his rich, color-stained canvases from the walls and ceiling. Sometimes monumental in scale, these lyrical works swing through space, on occasion enabling viewers to walk under and through them and offering an opportunity to be literally enveloped by color.

Gilliam’s revolutionary processes were inspired in part by other landmark mid-20th century painters working in Washington, D.C. Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, seminal founders of the Washington Color School, were among the first to stain un-sized canvas with acrylic paint, a method Gilliam began emulating in 1965. As he experimented with more improvisational techniques, epitomized by Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists in the 1950s, Gilliam’s work established its own identity, recognizable by the swirling, bleeding colors soaked into creased canvases.

While not the first to abandon the traditional stretcher, Gilliam’s reconfiguration of canvas and paint into three-dimensional works of art was a precursor to the blurring of boundaries between painting, sculpture, and space that characterized much of the art of the 1970s. Gilliam’s evocative use of color and his expansive vision have assured his place as one of the most important abstractionists of the late 20th century.

With more than 40 paintings, mixed-media constructions, and installations from 1967 to the present, Sam Gilliam: a retrospective highlights the scope of Gilliam’s work and his constantly evolving aesthetic of exploration, risk, and invention. The exhibition features 40 years of innovative uses of space, color, and light in complex multimedia work ranging from conventionally shaped paintings with beveled edges to multi-dimensional installations and sculpture. Sam Gilliam: a retrospective includes:
• Gilliam’s renowned Draped paintings, which hang from gallery ceilings and walls, swinging through space and interacting with architectural elements and visitors
• Beveled-edge/Slice paintings, created from accordion-folded canvases soaked with acrylic paint and unfolded when dry, with deep, weighty stretchers that have a strong sculptural presence and seem to emerge from the wall
• White and Black paintings of the 1970s, which expose the colorful support frames through the canvas to make them an integral part of the work
• Metal and wood constructions of the 1980s and 1990s that take on elements of painted collage
• Recent Slatt paintings, constructed of rhythmic and monochromatic blocks of color

Even though the Dictionary of Art calls him “the most prominent African American abstract painter,” Gilliam’s work has always been more concerned with color as it relates to the canvas than it does to the politics of identity. However, April 4, a piece from the exhibition created on the first anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, is one of many works that demonstrates the politically active side of a vital artist at the height of the Black Power era.

Sam Gilliam: a retrospective is curated by Jonathan P. Binstock, curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Prior to its presentation in Houston, the exhibition was presented at the Corcoran; The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; and the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia. Sam Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi and attended the University of Louisville, where he received his BA in creative art (1955) and MA in painting (1961). He has lived and worked in Washington, D.C. since 1962. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia since the early 1970s, and is included in the collections of major museums across the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris; and the Tate Gallery, London.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 220-page catalogue, the first fully illustrated in-depth scholarly publication devoted to Gilliam’s work. With more than 75 color images and 30 blackand-white illustrations, the catalogue reproduces the work in the exhibition as well as other Gilliam projects, including public commissions, site-specific temporary installations, and a stage set design. It features an essay by Binstock on Gilliam’s career and his influences, antecedents, and contributions to the history of art. It also includes a contribution by the late Walter Hopps, renowned curator, director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in the early 1970s, founding director of The Menil Collection, Houston, and an early Gilliam champion. In addition, the catalogue features an illustrated chronology and bibliography, and is co-published by the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the University of California Press.

Sam Gilliam: a retrospective is organized and circulated by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Ellen and Gerry Sigal.