
B. North Carolina, 1914
D. New York, NY, 2000
Thomas Sills (1914 -2000) was born and raised in Castalia, North Carolina. He began painting in 1952, inspired by his wife Jeanne Reynal’s work, and her collection of abstract art. He did not have formal training as an artist, but through Reynal he met a wide range of artists: from Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst, to Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. Sills’s earliest paintings were experimental: he used a variety of tools to apply paint, along with a variety of materials on the surface. He also used an automatist approach. By the late 1950s, he began working with an idea of equivalence between figure and ground, so that each form is both the positive and the negative of the form next to it. He also frequently used a balance of two main colors in each painting. Often the compositions form radiating, optical sensations.
Sills was the subject of four solo exhibitions at Betty Parsons Gallery from 1955 to 1961. In 1962 he exhibited with Paul Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles; and had a two-person exhibition with Reynal at the New School for Social Research, New York. In the 1960s and early 70s, he showed with Bodley Gallery, New York. He was the subject of solo exhibitions at Creighton University, Omaha, NE; and the Art Association of Newport, RI. Sills was also included in several important historic exhibitions of African American artists in the 1960s and early 1970s. His work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, all New York; along with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Thomas Sills
The Morning, 1954
oil on canvas
42h x 44w in
106.68h x 111.76w cm
THSIL007
Thomas Sills
Easter Holliday, 1955
oil on canvas
49h x 41w in
124.46h x 104.14w cm
THSIL030
Thomas Sills
Grey Black, 1960
oil on canvas
47h x 50w in
119.38h x 127w cm
THSIL079
Thomas Sills
Mixed Earth, 1960
oil on canvas
46h x 48w in
116.84h x 121.92w cm
THSIL014
Thomas Sills
Native Dancer, 1958
oil on canvas
45 1/2h x 69w in
115.57h x 175.26w cm
THSIL013
Thomas Sills
Untitled, 1958
oil on canvas
39h x 48w in
99.06h x 121.92w cm
THSIL015
Thomas Sills
Travel, 1958
oil on canvas
49h x 60w in
124.46h x 152.40w cm
THSIL012
Thomas Sills
Still Pond, 1956
oil on canvas
37h x 49w in
93.98h x 124.46w cm
THSIL002
Thomas Sills
Untitled, 1968
oil on canvas
50h x 50w in
127h x 127w cm
THSIL142
Thomas Sills
Red Hour, 1968
oil on canvas
40h x 44w in
101.60h x 111.76w cm
THSIL297
Thomas Sills
Mix Day, 1969
oil on canvas
49h x 50w in
124.46h x 127w cm
THSIL149
Thomas Sills
Nilotic Waters, 1960
oil on canvas
84h x 68w in
213.36h x 172.72w cm
THSIL075
Thomas Sills
Burnt Forest, 1975
oil on canvas
49h x 46w in
124.46h x 116.84w cm
THSIL090
Thomas Sills
Out, 1975
oil on canvas
49h x 50w in
124.46h x 127w cm
THSIL161
Thomas Sills
Untitled (white painting), 1975
oil on canvas
30h x 40w in
76.20h x 101.60w cm
Framed: 30h x 40w in
76.20h x 101.60w cm
THSIL340
Thomas Sills
Untitled, 1975
oil on canvas
50h x 50w in
127h x 127w cm
THSIL059
One of only a few African American participants in the abstract expressionist movement, Thomas Sills (1914–2000) has been largely overlooked until recently. Donated by John Pappajohn to the National Gallery of Art, the painting Flagship (1963) epitomizes the distinctive style and technique Sills developed to create elegant abstractions with a limited palette and disciplined forms.
Thomas Sills (1914-2000) is, for many contemporary viewers, a discovery: Much of the work in “Variegations, Paintings From the 1950s-70s” at Eric Firestone was in storage before being mounted here. Sills was hardly unknown during his lifetime, though. He socialized with New York School painters like Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko and had several solo exhibitions at the historically significant Betty Parsons Gallery before receding from the art world around 1980.
Sills’s paintings here include many of the traditional mid-20th-century New York School concerns. Abstract canvases with colored interlocking forms like “Travel” (1958) and “Son Bright” (1975) have a vibrant, dynamic tension similar to works by Lee Krasner and Piet Mondrian, who played with the painterly grid, and with the fleshy, promiscuous pink favored by de Kooning. Sills’s surfaces are also notable. He used rags instead of brushes to finish his paintings, and this gives the pigment a particularly even look, beautifully integrated into the canvas surface.