Apr 05, 2018 - Sale 2472

Sale 2472 - Lot 93

Price Realized: $ 233,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 40,000 - $ 60,000
SAM GILLIAM (1933 - )
Untitled.

Acrylic on cotton canvas, 1972. 527x1143 mm; 20 3/4x45 inches, with beveled edges. Signed in ink on the canvas overflap, verso.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Washington, DC.

This fiery canvas of purple and orange is an excellent example of Sam Gilliam's color field painting of the early 1970s. These 1972 paintings were experimental works made on the studio floor with Gilliam's "soak-stain" technique. Jonathan Binstock details the artist's innovative direction at the time: "This kind of stunning soak-stain effect was explored to the extreme in beveled-edge paintings made between 1970 and 1972, such as Red April, Blue Twirl, and Scatter, in which one of Gilliam's main purposes appears to have been to create the most exquisite and improbable color combinations he could imagine." Binstock pp. 92 and 94.