Aubrey Williams

(Disambiguation: For the New Dealer and mentor to Lyndon Baines Johnson see Aubrey Willis Williams)

Aubrey Williams (1926 in Georgetown, Guyana – 1990) was a prominent artist and art lecturer in the United Kingdom.

Williams was educated and worked in the Civil Service. During service in the North West jungle of Guyana he lived for two years with an indigenous tribe, the Warrau, which became one of the formative influences of his life.

Hearing the Indians talking about colour and form, Williams "started to understand what art really is". Much of his work came from his involvement in the work of South American Indians, and these visual and cultural influences are an evident preoccupation of Williams' early work.

In 1954 Williams settled in Britain where he studied briefly at St Martin's School of Art. He started showing his work in numerous exhibitions throughout the 1950s and the early 1960s. Aubrey Williams was one of the founding members of the Caribbean Artists Movement (1966-72) and had a pioneering role in the development of black visual culture in Britain, which was to have an inestimable influence on the British art scene for the next fifteen years. Williams exhibited and lectured extensively maintaining studios in Jamaica and later Florida.

ee also

* Culture of Guyana

External links

* [http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/exhibitions/2002aub/index.shtml Selection of work by Aubrey Williams]
* [http://www.iniva.org/archive/person/237 Institute of international visual arts focus on Aubrey Williams]