SAVANNAH, GA.- The Telfair is delighted to host Sam Gilliam: a retrospective, marking the first full-career retrospective of an artist often described as the most prominent African American abstract painter. Sam Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1933, but moved with his family to Louisville, Kentucky in 1942. In 1962, after earning his master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Louisville, Gilliam moved to Washington, DC, where he discovered a flourishing art scene. The Washington Color School, whose members soaked and stained untreated canvases to produce evocative color-field abstractions, was the first local art movement to gain national attention. By 1965 Gilliam had become one of the group’s youngest associates. The merit of his early Color School work earned him a solo show at the prestigious Phillips Collection in Washington in 1968.

Around this time, Gilliam began to experiment with his media, pushing the boundaries of the traditional canvas and stretcher bar support. His revolutionary Beveled-edge Paintings utilized beveled stretcher bars that made his canvases appear to either float upon or emerge directly from the wall, depending on the direction of the beveling. Later, in his groundbreaking Draped Paintings, Gilliam dispensed with wooden stretchers altogether, allowing his soaked and stained canvases to sag and hang from gallery ceilings, swinging through space. Now into his fifth decade as an artist, Gilliam continues to prove himself an innovator, creating work that challenges the traditional boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture. As this retrospective demonstrates, he defies categorization as either simply a Washington Color School artist or an African American artist.

Gilliam was honored with a solo exhibition at Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1971, and was one of only six artists to represent the United States at the 1972 Venice Biennale. Sam Gilliam: a retrospective is the most extensive presentation of Gilliam’s work to date, and includes examples of work from all stages of the artist’s career, including monumental paintings, elaborate mixed-media constructions and installation pieces. The Telfair is fortunate to have two works by Gilliam in its permanent collection, one of which, #8 To Repin, To Repin, is included in this retrospective. Gilliam’s work is also held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and many other notable institutions.

The exhibition is on display in the Jepson Center for the Arts, occupying the Steward Galleries, Kane Gallery, and the Lewis Gallery for Southern Art. Sam Gilliam: a retrospective is organized and circulated by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and made possible through the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and Ellen and Gerry Sigal. Local support has been provided by the Savannah Tribune.