Sam Gilliam was born on November 30, 1933 in Tupelo, Mississippi, USA. He was married to Annie Gawlak and Dorothy Butler Gilliam. He died on June 25, 2022 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
Abstract painter whose works are in the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Tate Modern in London.
He graduated from the University of Louisville with a bachelor's degree in creative art. After a stint as an Army clerk in Japan, he returned to Louisville and received a master's degree in painting.
Father was a railroad worker, his mother a schoolteacher.