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Aubrey Williams

1926–1990

Cosmic Storm 1977
© The estate of Aubrey Williams
License this image
In Tate Britain

Modern and Contemporary British Art

Biography

Aubrey Williams (8 May 1926 – 27 April 1990) was a Guyanese artist. He was best known for his large, oil-on-canvas paintings, which combine elements of abstract expressionism with forms, images and symbols inspired by the pre-Columbian art of indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Born in Georgetown in British Guiana (now Guyana), Williams began drawing and painting at an early age. He received informal art tutoring from the age of three, and joined the Working People's Art Class at the age of 12. After training to be an agronomist, he worked as an Agricultural Field Officer for eight years, initially on the sugar plantations of the East Coast and later in the North-West region of the country—an area inhabited primarily by the indigenous Warao people. His time among the Warao had a dramatic impact on his artistic approach, and initiated the complex obsession with pre-Columbian arts and cultures that ran throughout his artistic career.

Williams left Guyana at the height of the Independence Movement in 1952, and moved to the United Kingdom. Following his first exhibition in London in 1954, he became an increasingly significant figure in the post-war British avant-garde art scene, particularly through his association with Denis Bowen's New Vision Centre Gallery. In 1966, he came together with a group of London-based Caribbean artists and intellectuals to found the Caribbean Artists Movement, which served as a dynamic hub of cultural events and activity until its dissolution in 1972. From 1970 onwards, Williams worked in studios in Jamaica and Florida as well as the UK, and it was during this period that he produced three of his best-known series of paintings: Shostakovich (1969–1981), The Olmec-Maya and Now (1981–1985) and Cosmos (1989).

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Artworks

Left Right
  • Olmec Maya - Now and Coming Time

    Aubrey Williams
    1985
  • Shostakovitch 3rd Symphony Opus 20

    Aubrey Williams
    1981
  • Death and the Conquistador

    Aubrey Williams
    1959
  • Tribal Mark II

    Aubrey Williams
    1961
    On display at Tate Britain part of Modern and Contemporary British Art
  • Cosmic Storm

    Aubrey Williams
    1977
  • Shostakovich Quartet No. 15 opus 144

    Aubrey Williams
    1981

Features

  • List

    Five Things to Know about Aubrey Williams

Sketches, letters, etc.

  • Letter from Aubrey [Williams] to Ronald Moody

    Aubrey Williams, recipient: Ronald Moody
    [1975–6]

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