Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam was an American painter, sculptor and educator. He was born in Tupelo, Mississippi on November 30, 1933, the seventh of eight children. His family moved to Louisville, Kentucky in 1942. 

His father worked at a variety of jobs; he farmed, pitched baseball, was a deacon, a janitor and did carpentry as a hobby. His mother was a school teacher and sewed as a hobby. Gilliam said that creativity was encouraged at home, and most of his siblings did some form of art or craft.

Gilliam participated in art programs in middle and high school and, inspired by Marvel comics, wanted to become a cartoonist.

Gilliam’s father suggested that he go and watch Mr. Clay, a local artist, paint signs, billboards and murals. (Mr. Clay was Cassius Clay Sr., the father of Cassius Clay, Jr., the boxer who changed his name to Muhammad Ali when he converted to Islam.) Gilliam said he was inspired when he saw Mr. Clay paint a mural in a bolder and more abstract way than he painted signs and billboards.’

After high school, Gilliam attended the University of Louisville, where he earned his B.A. in painting in 1955. He was a member of the second admitted class of black undergraduate students at the school. His first solo exhibit was held at the University a year after he graduated.

Gilliam was drafted into the army and served from 1956 to 1958. He was stationed in Yokohama. After his discharge, he returned to the University of Louisville and completed his M.A. in painting in 1961.

Before he was dratted, Gilliam had began to date Dorothy Butler. They continued to see each other, although Butler was studying journalism at Columbia in New York, while Gilliam was completing his Masters. His visits to New York led to his interest in the works of Hans Hoffman and other Abstract Expressionists.

The couple married in 1962 and moved to Washington D.C., where Butler was hired as the first African-American woman reporter for The Washington Post and Gilliam became known as “the dean” of D.C.’s arts community. 

Gilliam taught art at McKinley Technical High School in D.C. for five years. He had his first solo show in D.C. at the Adam Morgans Gallery in 1963. He began to meet artists from the Washington Color School and his work became more abstract and experimental.

Butler and Gilliam had three daughters. Stephanie, filmmaker L. Franklin,  and Melissa, a pediatric and adolescent gynecologist and academic, who has served as the 11th president of Boston University since July 2024.

Gilliam and Butler divorced in 1982. In 1986 he met Annie Gawlak, the owner of Washington's G Fine Art gallery. Gilliam and Gawlak married in 2018 after a 30-year partnership.

Gilliam died of renal failure at his home in D.C., on June 25, 2022, at the age of 88.

in 1972, Gilliam became the first African American artist to represent the United States in a solo presentation at the Venice Biennale. His work was included in the Venice Biennale for a second time in 2017, and was the subject of solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York  in 1971, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York in 1982, the J.B. Speed Memorial Museum in Louisville, in 1996, the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland  in 2018 and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2022. Gilliam received the U.S. State Department’s Medal of Arts in 2015 for his cultural diplomacy, as well as honorary doctorates from eight universities. He was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022.