Artist Sam Gilliam (American, 1933–2022)
Title New Moon
Date 1992
Medium Color lithograph with hand additions and collage on paper
Dimensions Image: 30 x 22 3/8 in. (76.2 x 56.8 cm)
Sheet: 30 x 22 3/8 in. (76.2 x 56.8 cm)
Credit Line Echo Press Archive, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 92.485
About this Work
This print was produced as part of a fund-raising effort in support of Echo Press, a fine art press located in Bloomington and affiliated with Indiana University (1979-1995). Sam Gilliam was a favorite in the press's roster of artists, working with master printer David Keister and his assistant Dave Calkins in 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, and 1995.
Although the Indiana University Art Museum holds the archive for Echo Press's editioned prints, it did not typically receive unique objects, such as monoprints and variant editions. Echo Press was known for its willingness to do complicated mixed media prints, handwork, and almost anything the artist wanted, making it a perfect for an experimental artist like Gilliam.
Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1933, and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. He received his BA in 1956 and his MA in 1961, both from the University of Louisville. Although he began as a figurative painter, his move to Washington, D.C., in 1962 introduced him to the work of Washington Color School artists, such as Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. Gilliam quickly embraced their technique of pouring paint directly onto raw, un-stretched canvases. This methodology liberated him from the confines of canvas and brush painting and enabled him to create his world-renowned drape paintings, which he displayed without stretchers, draped from walls and ceilings in a haphazard fashion. Always an experimental artist, Gilliam pushes himself to break with tradition and to extend his medium (be it painting, sculpture, or printmaking) into new realms.
