Sam Gilliam

(American, 1933-2022)

Cool Zebras #6

, 1997

unique relief and die-cut collage with hand additions

signed in silver marker, from the edition of 23

12 x 12 inches.

Published by Tandem Press, Madison, Wisconsin

Lot Note:

Sam Gilliam challenged the foundations of every medium he put his hand to, and the print studio offered a playground of materials and techniques. He is perhaps best remembered for his experiments with color field painting in the 1970s. His canvases were draped and suspended – like the sheets hanging from the clothesline he could see outside his Washington studio – breaking away from the rigid forms of the stretcher that had dominated painting since the introduction of stretched canvas paintings in the sixteenth century.

He began his career in the 1960s and ‘70s as part of the Washington Color School, coming to art during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. As a Black artist, Gilliam was largely ignored by the mainstream art world until late in his career. Nonetheless, he continued to interrogate materiality and its associations in African American culture. Though many of his Black contemporaries used easily identifiable imagery to speak to the Black experience, Gilliam was devoted to abstraction. His experiments included layered materials, collage, and overlaid forms in the composition that reference, for example, quiltmaking traditions. These experiments moved his editioned artworks away from their traditional place on a rectilinear sheet of paper, allowing each to be an encrusted and freestanding form with rich impasto and spontaneity.

Framed: 20 x 18 3/4 inches.
Not examined out of frame; all edges visible; appears to be hinged to the backing board along edges; minor dirt and dust; otherwise appears to be in overall stable condition. Please request additional images.

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Monica Brown

Managing Director, Vice President, Fine Art, Head of Department, Prints and Multiples

[email protected]303.825.1855

Ms. Brown rejoined the firm in 2019 as a senior specialist in the Fine Art department, where she has been the resident expert and Head of Sale for Prints and Multiples. She has over 17 years of art-market experience, most recently as founder of Monica Brown Fine Art. In addition to working for renowned auction houses, she has extensive knowledge in over five centuries of works on paper from her tenure at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and eight years of experience with one of London’s leading dealers of Pop Art editions.

Prints & Multiples

Cool Zebras #6

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