?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
SAM GILLIAM (1933 - ) April 4.
Acrylic on canvas with collage, 1972. 1829x1219 mm; 72x48 inches. Signed, titled and dated in ink on the verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection.
This beautiful abstraction is monumental in more ways than one. Sam Gilliam made this painting towards the end of an important series of six or seven paintings entitled April 4 that, beginning in 1969, mark the anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Also called by the artist the Martin Luther King series, each is "a monument not only to King, but also to Gilliam's own inimitable voice, which the artist is able to make sing, throught the play of color, fracture, and design, with a rare and poignant beauty." This stretched canvas shows Gilliam's trend in the mid 1970s towards thicker layers of color, away from staining and draping, which give this abstract eulogy additional depth and gravitas. Binstock p. 73.
