Sam Gilliam’s conceptually innovative and stylistically diverse paintings have been associated with the Washington Color School and the lyrical abstraction movement. Born in 1933 in Tupelo, Mississippi, Gilliam earned a BFA and an MFA at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, before moving to Washington, D.C., where he lives and works today. In the 1960s he began experimenting with his medium by displaying his canvases folded, draped, or otherwise unstretched. Disrupting this convention of two-dimensional art, Gilliam’s vibrant and volumetric “drape paintings” interact with their architectural surroundings and remain his best-known works. His ongoing interest in alternative artistic construction is also evident in his quilted works of the 1980s, which draw on textile traditions, and in his recent juxtapositions of painted canvases with sculpted metal forms.