Guyana X

Aubrey Williams was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and began painting and drawing at an early age, joining the Working People’s Art Class (the first established art institution in Guyana) at the age of 12. Williams left Guyana at the height of the Independence Movement in 1952, and sailed to London. He trained at St Martin’s School of Art, and enjoyed his first exhibition in 1954. With his unique visual vocabulary informed by his Guyanese heritage, and his extensive travels in Europe – where he met Pablo Picasso, and Albert Camus amongst others – Williams soon became an increasingly significant figure in the post-war British avant-garde art scene.

As a founder member of the Carribean Artist’s Movement, Williams was deeply embedded in the explosion of creativity generated by the influx of Carribean writers, artists and intellectuals to London at the time. His paintings were widely exhibited from the early 1960s, placing him as a central figure in challenging the historic white dominance in the British art establishment. Drawing influence from Abstract Expressionism, imagery from ancient Mayan and indigenous Warrau cultures, and from the symphonies of Shostakovich, Williams’ oeuvre has eschewed classification. His work is held in important public collections including Tate, London, and Arts Council of England, and his paintings have been the recent subject of major exhibitions at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2010), and Tate Britain (2007).