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.