As featured in The Wall Street Journal’s 2024 Holiday Gift Books: Fine Art

The definitive monograph of Sam Gilliam one of the great innovators in post-war American painting

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.

This book, made in close collaboration with the Sam Gilliam Foundation, is the first to comprehensively survey the breadth of his extraordinary career, and features never-before-seen archival materials an 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.

‘This gorgeous and comprehensive volume celebrates an innovator who deserved more acclaim in his lifetime.’ – Wall Street Journal

‘Reproduces his artworks with great detail, offering close-up shots capturing their material quality – the staining and smudging, the drips, the crinkling – and allowing for close study, resulting in a gorgeous object of a coffee table book.’ – Hyperallergic

‘For the arty heart.’ – Vanity Fair

Ishmael Reed is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, playwright, editor, and publisher.

Mary Schmidt Campbell is  an art historian, scholar and President Emerita of Spelman College in Atlanta. 

Andria Hickey is  Head of Programmes at Fogo Island Arts and Shorefast in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

Sam Gilliam (1933-2022) was one of the great innovators in postwar American painting. He emerged from the Washington DC scene in the mid 1960s with works that elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting.