Pioneering Color Field Painter Was a Member of Kappa Alpha Psi

Did you know that pioneering painter Sam Gilliam was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi? Gilliam was initiated through the Alpha Omicron Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. at the University of Louisville.

Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, on November 30, 1933, and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Gilliam earned his Bachelor of Arts in fine arts from the University of Louisville in 1955 as part of only the second class of Black undergraduates admitted to the school. After two years as an Army clerk in Japan, he returned to complete a master’s degree in painting in 1961. In 1962, he settled in Washington, D.C., where he became known as the dean of the city’s arts community and taught for years in the public schools.

Gilliam was associated with the Washington Color School, a group of D.C.-area artists who developed a form of abstract art from color field painting in the 1950s and 1960s. He pushed the movement further by working on stretched, draped, and wrapped canvas to create sculptural, three-dimensional pieces. Around 1965, he became the first artist to hang a painted canvas free of stretcher bars directly from the wall, a breakthrough now recognized as a major contribution to the Color Field School. Those “Drape paintings” became his signature, and he later became the first Black artist to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale.

Gilliam passed on June 25, 2022, at age 88. His bold, boundary-breaking work remains a lasting chapter in the story of Black art and Black Greekdom.

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