Sam Gilliam established himself as a major artist in 1968 when he jettisoned the wooden stretcher bars that had previously determined the shape of his paintings and allowed his vivid, sometimes ecstatic, rushes of color-stained canvas to hang, billow, and swing through space. Yet Gilliam's contributions to art history extend far beyond these often monumental and always dramatic works. In this volume, the first in-depth book devoted to this major figure, Corcoran Gallery of Art Curator of Contemporary Art Jonathan P. Binstock explores four decades of work and establishes the artist’s place in the history of post-1960s art. Binstock’s wide-ranging and provocative inquiry into Gilliam’s groundbreaking achievements as a modernist and as an African American artist is supported with a wealth of beautifully produced illustrations—both full-color and black-and-white—as well as an annotated and illustrated chronology and an exhaustive bibliography. This thoughtful exploration and appraisal of Gilliam’s extraordinary oeuvre places the artist at the forefront of American abstract art.
