Modern and Contemporary Art

A prominent artist of the Color Field School in Washington, D.C., Sam Gilliam was best known for his colorful draped paintings, freeing the canvas from the stretcher and bringing it out into space as a three-dimensional object. In 1975 he created a seven-part series titled Seahorses, which was commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance to adorn the exterior walls of the museum’s east facade. After this time, he moved away from the technique toward more collage and assemblage works, of which the present lot is an excellent example.

In an interview with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gilliam once said, “I was free to try anything I really wanted to. I was free to be easy or mysterious. I was free to be the artist that I really wanted to be. ... I think that even as an artist is that I discover new things every day, every time I go to a museum, and that’s what the works are there for.” This sentiment permeates Gilliam’s work, with playful shapes and intense colors all contributing to a dynamism that is his alone.