Sam Gilliam is an African-American color field painter and lyrical abstractionist artist. Gilliam is associated with the Washington Color School, a group of Washington, D.C. area artists that developed a form of abstract art from color field painting in the 1950s and 1960s. First graders were inspired by Gilliam's work and other Color-Field painters like Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis. Their beautiful 'Stripe' Paintings can be seen below.