Between 1967 and 1973, American abstract painter Sam Gilliam (born 1933) undertook some of the most radical work of his six-decade-plus career, a period culminating in Gilliam’s representing the US at the Venice Biennale in 1972. The work, including his Martin Luther King series and Jail Jungle series, reflected the fractured political climate of this period. It was also during this period that Gilliam began his beveled-edge paintings. In these iconic works, Gilliam poured acrylic paint directly onto the unprimed canvas, which he folded and crumpled while the paint was still wet, then stretched the canvas over a chamfered frame. The work in Sam Gilliam: The Music of Color conveys the influence of the DC Color Field school on Gilliam’s art, and his blending of the lines between sculpture and painting.