Sam Gilliam

An African American artist in the nation's capital at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Sam Gilliam blazed a trail with his singular artistic vision. Gilliam emerged from the Washington, DC art scene in the mid-1960s with works that disrupted established artistic norms and styles.

Relentlessly experimental and inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, Gilliam's lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials.

Sam Gilliam, made in close collaboration with Gilliam's estate, is the first book to comprehensively survey the breadth of his extraordinary career. It features never-before-seen archival materials and insightful newly commissioned texts that shine light on the artist, his life, and his work, together with examples of Gilliam's work spanning five decades.