Early years Aubrey Williams was born on 8 May 1926 in
Georgetown in
British Guiana, the eldest of seven children. His parents were middle-class Guyanese with mixed African,
Carib, and possibly other, ancestry. He was raised in accordance with Christian, English values, and his parents strongly discouraged his childhood interest in populist, African-derived, art forms such as
Anancy stories and the
masquerade bands (locally known as "Santapee bands") that performed in the streets of Georgetown at Christmas. Williams' artistic tendencies emerged early on in his youth. When he was three years old, and living on Bourda Street in central Georgetown, he produced an observational sketch of a
turkey vulture eating a dead rat in
Bourda Cemetery. On seeing the drawing, his father (who was working as a postman at that time) took it to a local Dutch
art restorer, named Mr De Wynter, who worked in the churches of British Guiana. De Wynter instantly recognised Williams artistic talent, and decided to offer him informal art training. They worked together for five years. Reflecting on this early art training years later, Williams noted that it was very different from conventional methods of teaching art in the UK: "He [De Wynter] would give me a task to perform, say, ask me to draw some animals or some fruits. He would then take the drawing and see if it was good. He would never correct the drawing. He would instead make another drawing." It was, Williams said, the "best method" he had ever come across, and one that profoundly influenced him in his own career as an art teacher. Between the ages of 12 and 15, while he was still at school, Williams attended the
Working People's Art Class (WPAC) in Georgetown, which was led by the artist
E. R. Burrowes. At the age of 15, Williams enrolled on a four-year agricultural apprenticeship scheme that was run in affiliation with
University College, London. His training included a special focus on sugar production. He was appointed as an Agricultural Field Officer in 1944.
Adult life in British Guiana Agricultural Officer on the East Coast In the early years of his employment with the Department of Agriculture in British Guiana, Williams occupied three positions simultaneously: Field Officer, Agricultural Superintendent for the East Coast, and Cane-Farming Officer. He was appointed to the latter position following his efforts to negotiate with the government on behalf of the cane-farmers. As Cane-Farming Officer, he was expected to "smooth out relations" between the owners and managers of the
sugar plantations and the workers, without "rocking the boat". Williams, however, had other plans. He worked hard to defend the rights of the cane-farmers, and in doing so was brought into regular confrontation with the plantation managers. Indeed, in his words, he became "a bloody thorn in their side, demanding correct figures, fair play, and that sort of thing". Although this period of his life was a very stressful one, Williams continued painting throughout.
The Working People's Art Class Shortly after he qualified as an Agricultural Officer, Williams contacted
E. R. Burrowes and returned to the
Working People's Art Class, but this time as a teacher and organiser. Together they extended the WPAC beyond central Georgetown by setting up auxiliary classes throughout the East Coast. Williams himself established new classes in the agricultural regions in which he was working, and would often lead classes when Burrowes was unavailable. The classes were held at least twice weekly.
Time among the Warao in the North-West After a number of years working on the East Coast, Williams was sent to work among the
Warao (or Warrau) people in the North-West of the country (now the
Barima-Waini region, or Region 1). He was put in charge of the Agricultural Station in the area. Although he had technically been promoted, Williams initially viewed his redeployment as a form of punishment for his activism on behalf of the sugar-cane farmers. "It was like sending someone to Siberia," he said. However, Williams' perspective on his time in the North-West region changed dramatically within the first six months. He ultimately stayed in the area for two years, and the interaction he had with Warao people during this period had a profound effect on his artistic development. Listening to the Warao talk about colour and form totally transformed his understanding of art; and his experiences in this region instigated an interest in pre-Columbian culture and artefacts which subsequently became "the core of [his] artistic activity". Indeed, in 1987 Williams reflected: "[I]t was there that for the first time I discovered myself as an artist. Before that it was all amateur activity. [...] I have to thank the Warrau people now for my work as an artist". Williams created many paintings while working in the North-West region, but he destroyed most of his work soon after it was created.
Return to Georgetown After two years living with the Warao, Williams returned to Georgetown, where he resumed his work with the Working People's Art Class. The moment of his return, however, was a time of great political upheaval in the city. The
Independence Movement in British Guiana was gaining strength, and most of his friends had joined the
People's Progressive Party (PPP), which was at the forefront of the struggle. Although Williams was never a member of the PPP, and did not attend any of their meetings, he was close to the party's leader,
Cheddi Jagan. This association alone raised suspicion among British colonists, prompting an investigation into Williams' early work for the Department of Agriculture, and he was ultimately accused of having founded "farmer's communes" on the East Coast. Around this time, one of his friends in the PPP – who he would later claim "saved his life" – advised him to leave the country. Three months later, Williams took this advice and departed for the UK.
England The first few years Williams arrived in England in 1952 at the age of 26. He took up accommodation at Hans Crescent in London – an area that was, according to him, populated by the "colonial elite": "the sons of
Maharajas, the upper middle classes" – and enrolled on a course in Agricultural Engineering at the
University of Leicester. However, following discouragement from his university lecturers and growing feelings of discomfort with his accommodation (he later described Hans Crescent as part of a form of "British brainwashing and indoctrination" because "after living like [that] for a few months you would begin to despise your own people back home"), he dropped his university course and embarked on a period of travel in Europe and the UK. During his travels he met
Albert Camus who, in turn, introduced him to
Pablo Picasso. For Williams, the meeting with Picasso was a "big disappointment". On being introduced, the Spanish painter told him that "[he] had a very fine African head" and said that he would like Williams to pose for him. "I felt terrible," Williams recalled. "In spite of the fact that I was introduced to him as an artist, he did not think of me as another artist. He thought of me only as something he could use for his own work." On returning from his travels in 1954, Williams enrolled as a student at
St Martin's School of Art. He studied at St. Martin's for more than two and a half years. In his second year, however, he decided that he wanted to use the school's facilities and resources but did not want their diploma and thus did not register after this time. In 1954 he held his first exhibition at the little-known Archer Gallery in
Westbourne Grove in London. During these early years in London, Williams married his partner, Eve Lafargue, who had travelled with him from British Guiana.
Recognition: from New Vision to the Commonwealth Prize Sometime in the late 1950s Williams met
Denis Bowen—founder of the New Vision Group and director of the
New Vision Gallery in London from 1951 to 1966. Though under-recognized at the time, the New Vision Centre Gallery (NVCG) played an important role in the post-war British art scene through its promotion of abstract art and its unusual openness to, and interest in, artists from all around the world. Williams' involvement with the NVCG marked an important turning-point in his career. A number of his paintings were included in the New Vision Open Exhibition in early 1958, and the Gallery put on two solo exhibitions of his work in August 1959 and November 1960. These exhibitions were a great success for Williams: his work received positive reviews from numerous art critics and sold well, and he subsequently obtained further invitations to exhibit in Paris, Milan and Chicago. At the time of this success, Williams felt that he had "made it" as an artist. However, after two years the interest in his work subsided and his exhibitions started to be ignored. For Williams, this precipitated a five-year period of self-doubt and "confusion". Another breakthrough in his career came in 1963 when 40 of his paintings were exhibited in the Commonwealth Biennale of Abstract Art at the
Commonwealth Institute in London. Williams was awarded the only prize of the exhibition for his painting
Roraima (the £50 prize was donated by the British artist
Frank Avray Wilson). In 1965 Williams was awarded the Commonwealth Prize for Painting, which was presented by
Queen Elizabeth II.
The Caribbean Artists Movement In the mid-1960s Williams joined forces with a small group of London-based Caribbean intellectuals and artists to found the
Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). The other founding members of the movement were:
Kamau Brathwaite,
Wilson Harris, Louis James,
Evan Jones,
John La Rose,
Ronald Moody,
Orlando Patterson and
Andrew Salkey. Active for six years (from 1966 to 1972), CAM took the form of meetings, readings, exhibitions, seminars and conferences, which sought to provide a forum for Caribbean artists to exchange ideas, address particular artistic issues, and discuss each other's work. It began as a series of small, private meetings held in members' homes but quickly expanded into larger, public events. Williams was a regular at CAM events and played an important pioneering role in the movement, "which was to have an inestimable influence on the British art scene for the next fifteen years". In April 1967, he held an informal meeting at his studio in which he talked about his work, his creative process, his influences and philosophy. The meeting was attended by Brathwaite, La Rose, Salkey and Harris. At CAM's first Symposium of West Indian Artists, which was held at the
West Indian Students' Centre in
Earl's Court on 2 June 1967, Williams gave a short speech about themes in Caribbean art. He also attended the first CAM conference in September 1967 at the
University of Kent, and presented a paper entitled "The Predicament of the Artist in the Caribbean". In this paper he argued against ideas that art should be figurative or narrative, while also suggesting that Caribbean artists need not turn to contemporary European artists for examples of more abstract or non-narrative forms; they could, instead, find precedents in the "primitive" art of South America and the Caribbean. In May 1960 he contributed a number of paintings to CAM's first art exhibition. Williams described CAM as "very important" both for himself and for other Caribbean artists. "It helped create an intellectual atmosphere for everyone to be creative and relate to each other", he said, and provided an "international platform" through which individual members "came to know what was happening in the rest of the Commonwealth" and through which he personally met other artists "from Africa, from India and from many parts of the world".
Later years: between London, Jamaica, Florida and Guyana . While Williams maintained a base in London until the end of his life, from 1970 onward he spent large amounts of time working overseas in
Jamaica, Florida and, less frequently, Guyana. In February 1970 he travelled to Guyana with a group of CAM artists – including Brathwaite, Harris, Salkey and
Sam Selvon – for a Caribbean Writers and Artists Convention that was organised by the Guyanese government as part of the Guyana Republic Celebrations of that year. This was the first time he had returned to Guyana since 1952, and Williams received the national honour of
The Golden Arrow of Achievement. In the same year he completed a government-commissioned series of five murals, named
Timehri, at the
Cheddi Jagan International Airport. 1970 was also the year in which Williams first travelled to Jamaica. After this initial visit, he spent several months in Jamaica every year and was ultimately appointed Artist-in-Residence at the Olympia Art Centre in
Kingston. In 1972, he took part in the first
Carifesta in Guyana, which ran from 25 August to 15 September. In 1976, he completed two murals in Jamaica, at the School of Hope for Mentally Handicapped Children and at the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Swallowfield Road. In 1977 he exhibited work as a participant in the
Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (Festac '77) held in Lagos, Nigeria, from 15 January to 12 February, together with other UK-based Black artists, including
Winston Branch,
Ronald Moody,
Uzo Egonu,
Armet Francis,
Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede and
Donald Locke. In May 1978, Williams completed a mural in Howe Hall at the
University of Dalhousie, which was commissioned by the Prime Minister of Guyana at that time,
Forbes Burnham. In the 1980s, Williams worked mainly in a studio in Florida. During these years, he produced three of his best-known series of paintings:
Shostakovich,
The Olmec-Maya and Now and
Cosmos. After his
Shostakovich exhibition at London's Commonwealth Institute in 1981 received scant coverage in the national press,
Guy Brett wrote in
Index on Censorship: "Aubrey Williams is able, to paint with epic power on a large scale. His paintings are a rare thing — a remarkable homage of one artist to another, and also of one medium to another. I felt his exhibition was a tonic to the whole art scene here, regardless of where one places oneself in the movement of styles and ideas. Yet it passes with virtually no comment in the cultural press. ...Yet he has lived and worked in Britain since 1954! It begins to be clear what Williams means when he describes himself as an 'exile' in this country, and how his situation is linked with the way the cultural establishment here boycotts artists who don't fit in with a traditional image of British art." In 1986, the Guyanese government awarded him
The Cacique's Crown of Honour, and that year he was the subject of a documentary film directed by
Imruh Caesar entitled
The Mark of the Hand, which was first screened at the
British Academy of Film and Television Arts in London on 16 December 1986. In 1989, paintings by Williams were included in an exhibition at the
Hayward Gallery entitled
The Other Story, which focused on the work of African and Asian artists in
post-World War II Britain. This was the first time that his work was exhibited in a mainstream public art gallery in the UK, and featured his
Cosmos series. In the words of Geoffrey MacLean, "It showed the vast span of Williams's spiritual and intellectual development, from the birds of Guyana and the environment of his childhood, through the memory of his Amerindian heritage, culminating in an appreciation of universal expression through music and spiritual realisation through the cosmos." Williams died in London on 17 April 1990, aged 63, "after a long fight with cancer". ==Legacy==