One of the key figures in painting in post-war Britain, Aubrey Williams brought together a spectrum of visual influences and cultural perspectives in his paintings which ranged from classical music and pre-Columbian iconography to science fiction and ecology.
Aubrey Williams travelled to London from Guyana in 1952 touring Britain and Europe extensively to examine works of modernist painters admired since he was a child. Throughout the 1950s and '60s Williams developed his art practice, exhibiting in the UK and abroad. He spent time in Italy, France and Germany, and enrolled at St Martin’s School of Art in London. The 1956 and 1959 Tate American Abstract Expressionism exhibitions – particularly works of Pollock, Rothko and Gorky – greatly inspired Williams. During the 1970s and ‘80s Williams’ painted in Jamaica and Florida, able to take advantage of light and environment as they impacted his resulting work.
The early 1980s witnessed Williams’ tour de force: two series both of large-scale paintings: one abstract series expressing his passionate encounter with the music of Dimitri Shostakovich and the other, entitled Olmec-Maya (1981-1984), drawing on his deep knowledge of historic Mesoamerican cultures. October Gallery has represented Williams from its first solo show of his work in 1984. Williams has been exhibited in a wide range of contexts and institutions, including Rasheed Araeen’s The Other Story (1989), the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s major retrospective, and a room display at Tate Britain. In 2010, October Gallery linked with the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool to produce two simultaneous Aubrey Williams exhibitions. In 2014, a symposium on his work was held at Cambridge University with another at October Gallery in 2015, highlighting the fact that his works still resist classification while attracting ever more attention.