The first African American to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale
Sam Gilliam.. Free the paintings from their frames and he is gone
Gilliam passed away at the age of 88.
AFP
Gilliam let his paintings hang from the ceiling or tumble down the walls as 'curtains'.
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American abstract painter Sam Gilliam died last Saturday at the age of 88, as announced, the day before yesterday, two exhibitions that collaborated with the artist known for his frame-free color paintings.
The New York Times reported that the artist, born in 1933 in Mississippi, who was the first African-American to represent the United States at the 1972 Venice Biennale, died at his home in Washington of kidney failure.
"Sam Gilliam was one of the giants of modernity," a statement quoted the founder of the "Base" gallery, Arne Glimcher, as saying.
As for David Cordansky, from the exhibition of the same name, he pointed out that "Sam embodied a vibrant spirit of freedom, achieved with courage, ferocity, sensitivity and poetry."
Sam Gilliam's art underwent a major transformation at the end of the sixties of the twentieth century, as he freed the canvases on which he was painted from the wooden frames that loomed them, leaving them hanging from the ceiling, for example, or hanging on the walls, under the title "curtains", after he had previously painted his colored shapes on Canvas panels folded before framing.
Three of the "Curtains" paintings are currently on display at an exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and will run until August 29.
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