“Sam Gilliam: New Works on Paper”

Beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the 1970s, Washington D.C. served as the center for a group of cutting-edge abstractionists who pioneered color-field painting, a genre which featured compositions formed out of solid expanses of thinly applied pigments. Among their number was Sam Gilliam, who stood out as a rare artist of color working in an overwhelming white art world. Moreover, he introduced the rather radical notion of dispensing with stretcher bars and treating painted canvases like pieces of draped fabric. Now 85, Gilliam is still going strong, as this show of oversized works on paper makes abundantly clear.