Sam Gilliam - Red and Black to "D", historic 1982 Studio Museum of Harlem poster (Hand Signed by Sam Gilliam), 1991

Sam Gilliam - Red and Black to "D", historic 1982 Studio Museum of Harlem poster (Hand Signed by Sam Gilliam), 1991

Scarce 1982 offset lithograph poster
Signed and dated 1991 in ink by Sam Gilliam
This is a hand signed exhibition poster for Sam Gilliam's landmark 1982 mid-career retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem, personally signed and dated 1991 by the artist. A rare and distinctive collectible with deep provenance.
In this exhibition that opened in November 1982 and ran through February 1983, the Studio Museum in Harlem brought together a group of red and black paintings, along with a selection from Gilliam's "D" series.
This historic poster was published on the occasion of the first Artist in Mid-Career exhibition presented in the Museum's new facility at the time in 1982.
The image also serves as the cover for the exhibition catalogue that accompanied the show.
Extremely scarce collectors' item when hand signed by the artist
Provenance: Collection of renowned journalist, playwright, poet and educator Lindsay Waldorf Patterson (1934-2009), New York, NY.
Lindsay Waldorf Patterson was a distinguished American English literature educator and author as well as a MacDowell Colony fellow (3 awards); Edward Albee Foundation fellow (2 awards); recipient award National Foundation on Arts & Humanities.

This work has been framed in a museum quality wood frame under UV plexiglass.
Measurements:
Framed:
30 inches (vertical) by 26 inches (horizontal) by 1.5 inches
Print (visible)
21.5 inches (vertical) by 25.5 inches (horizontal)

Sam Gilliam Biography
Sam Gilliam (b. 1933, d. 2022) is one of the great innovators in postwar American painting. He emerged from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid-1960s with works that elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting. A series of formal breakthroughs would soon result in his canonical Drape paintings, which expanded upon the tenets of Abstract Expressionism in entirely new ways. Suspending stretcherless lengths of painted canvas from the walls or ceilings of exhibition spaces, Gilliam transformed his medium and the contexts in which it was viewed. For an African American artist in the nation’s capital at the height of the Civil Rights movement, this was not merely an aesthetic proposition; it was a way of defining art’s role in a society undergoing dramatic change. Gilliam subsequently pursued a pioneering course in which experimentation has been the only constant. Inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, his lyrical abstractions continue to take on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials.

Gilliam has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions worldwide including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2022); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018); Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2011); J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, Louisville, KY (1996); Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris Branch, New York, NY (1993); The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY (1982); and Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (1971), among many other institutions. In 2021, Dia Art Foundation, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston made the historic joint acquisition of Gilliam’s important early work, the monumental installation Double Merge (1968), which was on view 2019–2022 at Dia Beacon in New York. Recent group exhibitions include Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (2024–2025); Edges of Ailey, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2024); Day for Night: New American Realism, organized by the Aïshti Foundation, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, Italy (2024); Abstraction after Modernism: Recent Acquisitions, Menil Collection, Houston, TX (2024); and American Voices and Visions: Modern and Contemporary Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. (2023). His work is included in over fifty permanent collections, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Tate Modern, London, England; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; and Art Institute of Chicago, IL.