Aubrey Williams was born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1926 and began drawing and painting at an early age. He trained as an agronomist and worked as an Agricultural Field Officer on the east coast sugar plantations and later in the north-west, inhabited by the indigenous Warrau people, which greatly influenced his interest in pre-Columbian art and culture. He immigrated to England in 1952, and became a significant artist among the post-war avant-garde, particularly through his association with Denis Bowen's New Vision Centre Gallery, and as a co-founder of the London-based Caribbean Artists Movement (1966-72).
Painter Aubrey Williams was born on 8 May 1926 in Georgetown in British Guiana (now Guyana), where he began drawing at an early age. He took painting lessons from a local art restorer and began studying at the Working People’s Art Class at the age of 12, prior to training as an agricultural apprentice in Georgetown, in affiliation with the University of London. In 1944 he was appointed agricultural field officer on a sugar plantation controlled by the colonial government, in which he fought to defend the rights of the plantation workers. He was later stationed in the north-west rainforest of Hosororo, working among the indigenous Amerindian Warrau population. He initially saw this as a punishment for his previous activism, but remained for two years, greatly influenced by the Warrau, both artistically - he built a strong interest in pre-Colombian art and culture - and politically: he often challenged the poor treatment of the Warrau. He saw art as a ‘way to change attitudes’ (British Film Institute) and his relationship with the Warrau led him to create work that explored his rich Guyanese identity. As Pauline de Souza has noted, identity, political activism and abstract forms became the three main pillars of his work (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2006).
Williams left Guyana in 1952 during a period of political unrest and obtained a scholarship to study Agricultural Engineering at the University of Leicester, but soon dropped out, embarking on a European tour. In 1953 he enrolled at St Martin’s School of Art in London, leaving a year later and exhibiting work in his first group show at the Archer Gallery in Westbourne Grove in west London, an area with a significant population of Windrush generation immigrants. In 1956 he saw an Arts Council exhibition at the Tate Gallery entitled Modern Art in the USA (1956) which had a profound effect on his paintings. Later that same year he met Denis Bowen, owner of the newly opened New Vision Centre Gallery. Bowen, an artist, teacher and critic was eager to show young and unknown non-figurative artists and in 1958 he exhibited Williams’ work, considered a fusion of contemporary British and Guyanese art. In 1962 one of his paintings was selected for inclusion in the Commonwealth Art Today exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute, London, alongside work by Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore, Graham Sutherland and fellow Guyanese painter, Frank Bowling. The following year Williams was awarded the only prize at the first Commonwealth Biennale of Abstract Art for his painting Roraima and the Commonwealth Institute became the main London venue at which his work was exhibited. In 1966 he joined the Caribbean Artists' Movement (CAM) (1966-72) — a collective of artists, writers and academics, including Ronald Moody, Stuart Hall and Errol Lloyd, established to celebrate Caribbean ‘nationhood’ and to ‘forge a new Caribbean aesthetic in the arts’ (Errol Lloyd, British Library, 2018). CAM public meetings were held at the West Indian Student Centre in London, where Williams took part in a symposium of West Indian artists. He also spoke at a CAM conference, held at the University of Kent at Canterbury, on 'The predicament of the artist in the Caribbean'.
In the 1970s Williams began work on a series of 30 works inspired by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, subsequently exhibited at the Commonwealth Institute (1981) and at the Royal Festival Hall (1984). Like Shostakovich, Williams was a collector of different influences, with Wainwright stating that ‘Williams had the ability to be in several places at once in the history of art’ (Leon Wainwright, Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire, 2010, p.46). In 1971 a solo exhibition of his recent paintings opened at the Camden Arts Centre, London, the same year in which he presented four paintings entitled Guyana Myths to the Guyana Museum. The following year he was heavily involved in organising Carifesta (1972) — the first Caribbean festival of arts in Guyana. In 1986 he curated Caribbean Expression in Britain at the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester with Pogus Caesar and Bill Ming, which featured the work of Frank Bowling, Sonia Boyce and Ronald Moody, among others. In 1989 his work was included in the ground-breaking exhibition, The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain curated by Rasheed Araeen at the Hayward Gallery, London alongside that of Lubaina Himid, Francis Newton Souza and Eddie Chambers. Aubrey Williams died of cancer on 27 April 1990 in London, England. His final series, Cosmos was shown posthumously at the October Gallery in 1995 and in 1998 a retrospective was held at the Whitechapel Gallery in London's East End. Williams’ work is represented in UK public collections including Arts Council England, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, and Tate.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Aubrey Williams]
Publications related to [Aubrey Williams] in the Ben Uri Library