Aubrey Williams

The first comprehensive exploration of Aubrey Williamss art, revealing the cross-cultural dynamics and transformations connecting Caribbean, British, and Atlantic histories The abstract paintings of Guyanese artist Aubrey Williams (19261990) evoke elemental forces of earth, fire, and cataclysm. At the same time, through these paintings, Williams bore witness to the deep historical interconnections linking the Caribbean, Britain and wider Atlantic worlds as they transformed through colonial and postcolonial eras. This book is the first comprehensive investigation of Williamss practice. With an introduction by Kobena Mercer and groundbreaking new scholarship by Ian Dudley, Claudia Hucke, and Giulia Smith, this volume addresses the Indigenous, ecological, and transnational dimensions of Williamss modernist oeuvre. In addition, a memoir by the artists daughter, Maridowa Williams, offers an intimate look at the biographical dimensions of his work. Alongside an extraordinary and revealing selection of unpublished and out-of-print writings by Williams, artworks illustrating the full range of his practicefrom early abstracts and lesserknown murals and portraits to such later major works as the Shostakovich, Bird Paintings, Olmec-Maya & Now and Cosmos seriesilluminate the complex cross-cultural dynamics at play across Williamss World Aesthetic. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art