Kunstmuseum Basel opens Sam Gilliam's first institutional solo exhibition in Europe

In The Music of Color, the Kunstmuseum Basel mounts the American artist Sam Gilliam’s (b. 1933) first institutional solo exhibition in Europe. The international team of curators has chosen to focus on the years between 1967 and 1973, the period of greatest creative radicalism in Gilliam’s oeuvre; in 1972, he was the first African-American to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. A focused selection of forty-five works from international private and public collections introduces visitors to the unique art of an influential painter who is still largely unknown to European audiences. The exhibition also opens up fresh perspectives on the history of abstract painting in the 1960s and 1970s. Often monumental and colorfully expressive, Sam Gilliam’s works mount a creative challenge to the traditional boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture and prompt a fruitful artistic and theoretical