Born in Harlem in 1927, Sam Middleton is celebrated for his collage paintings, which he often described as “an improvised solo.” In addition to his own practice, Middleton studied the history of collage extensively.
As a teenager, Middleton joined the U.S. Merchant Marine in 1944 in order to see the world beyond New York, going on to travel extensively as a service member for the next ten years. In 1950, he rented a Greenwich Village loft, and counted among his friends a cohort of black artists including Walter Williams, Clifford Jackson, Harvey Cropper, and Herb Gentry, as well as painters Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell. A frequent patron of the Five Spot jazz club, Middleton rubbed elbows with musicians including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and John Coltrane, whom he counted among his great influences.
In 1956, Middleton received a scholarship to attend the Instituto Allende in Mexico for one year. The experience proved to be a major breakthrough for the artist, who forewent the institute’s classes but began his first experiments with collage. “Collage painting was becoming his primary mode of expression, and the ephemera of his travels—ticket and transport forms, old newspapers—his media,” writes art historian Julie L. McGee. “Active formally, these collage elements are metaphors for movement and cultural exchange, yet their once-inherent temporal and spatial relationships are reconfigured within Middleton’s compositions.”
In 1960, four of Middleton’s recent works were featured in Young America 1960: Thirty American Painters Under Thirty-Six at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Shortly after, Middleton joined a wave of African American artists who moved to Europe to pursue life and art free from American anti-black racism. He quickly became a well-known figure of the Dutch art scene, associated with the country’s 1960’s Pop Art and a frequent collaborator with cutting-edge graphic designers. Though he initially planned to only stay in the Netherlands briefly, Middleton ultimately chose to put down permanent roots in the country until his passing in 2015. His works are held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum in New York and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, among others.
