page_title: Aubrey Williams
section_title: Later years: between London, Jamaica, Florida and Guyana
hierarchical_section_title: Aubrey Williams / Life / Later years: between London, Jamaica, Florida and Guyana
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of 'Tumatumari' by Aubrey Williams, which is part of the Timehri series of murals at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Guyana.
context_page_description: Aubrey Williams was a Guyanese artist. He was best known for his large, oil-on-canvas paintings, which combine elements of abstract expressionism with forms, images and symbols inspired by the pre-Columbian art of indigenous peoples of the Americas.
  Born in Georgetown in British Guiana, Williams began drawing and painting at an early age. He received informal art tutoring from the age of three, and joined the Working Peoples' Art Class at the age of 12. After training as an agronomist he worked as an Agricultural Field Officer for eight years, initially on the sugar plantations of the East Coast and later in the North-West region of the country—an area inhabited primarily by the indigenous Warao people. His time among the Warao had a dramatic impact on his artistic approach, and initiated the complex obsession with pre-Columbian arts and cultures that ran throughout his artistic career.
  Williams left Guyana at the height of the Independence Movement in 1952, and moved to the United Kingdom.
context_section_description: 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 May 1978 he 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.
  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.
caption: Tumatumari (1970) by Aubrey Williams.  This painting is part of the Timehri series of murals at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport.
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