1974 Sam Gilliam "June 5" Acrylic Painting
GUEST: It is a piece of art that I inherited from my stepmother who lived in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s. She was a lawyer with the federal government. She loved art, and so she educated herself. She went to galleries, museums, and whenever she and my dad had a little extra money, they would buy a piece of art and bring it into their home. She paid $800 for it.
APPRAISER: $800, wow.
GUEST: Which was significant. Mostly, they collected lithographs and...
APPRAISER: Yeah, it's a painting by an artist named Sam Gilliam. Sam Gilliam was an African American artist who spent his entire adult life and art career in Washington, D.C. He was born in 1933. He was originally from Mississippi, but grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and went to college there, and then moved to Washington. He was originally associated with a group of painters called the Washington Color School. They were abstract painters. They exhibited together in Washington beginning in the 1960s. He had some early success. He had shows at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., in the late '60s. He had a one-person show at MoMA in New York. And then he was the first African American artist to show at the Venice Biennale in 1972. His great innovation was, he did these large canvases which were stained, and they were sort of twisted and folded. He didn't frame them, and he would drape them…
GUEST: Mmm.
APPRAISER: ...and kind of hang them in different configurations. That was a real innovation as a way to look at a painting. In, in the late '60s, he started doing that. So your painting, it's beautiful. It was done in 1974, and then it says "June 5."
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: So that's either when it was done or maybe June 5 was the inspiration for the painting. And it's painted on, uh, polypropylene, which is the same material that they make sails from. And Gilliam liked it because of the way the paint's absorbed. You have the lighter areas, where it's very thinly applied. It's acrylic paint. And then you have these heavier areas, where it's kind of laid up on top of the paint and you can really see the texture. It's just a great example of that type of work that he was doing at that time. You can even see here, where it looks like it, where it may have been folded, which is what he would do. He would fold the pieces and crease them and just try to get the same feeling on a flat work that you might get with one of his draped pieces. Sam Gilliam had early fame, and then he sort of struggled to get a lot of market attention throughout his life. And then, ten or 15 years ago, he began to get a lot of attention.
GUEST: Hm.
APPRAISER: And so his market has really climbed in the last few years.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Um, he passed away in, in 2022.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: These early works are very desirable. In a retail situation, it would be priced at between $125,000 and $150,000.
GUEST: (gasps) (whispers) No! Oh, my goodness. (laughs) I'm shocked. (inhales) I'm shocked, yeah.
APPRAISER: Yeah. It's a, it's a really wonderful piece and a great, great legacy for your family.
GUEST: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, we hope to, we hope to keep it in the family for many years. But that's, that's amazing.
APPRAISER: I would insure it for $150,000.
GUEST: Yeah. Wow. (laughs)
$125,000 - $150,000 Retail
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Understanding Our Appraisals
Executive producer Marsha Bemko shares her tips for getting the most out of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.
Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
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