Quartet No.11, Opus 122 (Shostakovich series)

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

Guyana-born Williams settled in London in the 1950s and later spent large amounts of time working in Jamaica, Florida and, occasionally, Guyana. He developed an abstract painterly language that combined abstract expressionism with imagery drawn from pre-Columbian arts and culture and the Guyanese and Caribbean landscape.

Throughout his career, Williams found particular sympathy with the music and isolated life of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich working under the Soviet regime. Between 1969 and 1981, Williams created a series of 30 paintings, including this one, based on a particular symphony or quarter by Shostakovich. They were first exhibited in an exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute in 1981.

Born in the then British colony of Guyana, Aubrey Williams began painting at an early age, taking lessons from a restorer of religious paintings in Guyanese Churches before the age of 12. He trained later as an agronomist and arrived in Britain in 1952 for an Agricultural Engineering course at Leicester University. He travelled around Europe before settling in London and attending St Martins College of Art in 1954. He was an active participant in London's art world exhibiting work at the New Vision Centre Gallery and winning the only prize at the First Commonwealth Biennale of Abstract Art. In the 1960s, as attitudes to immigrants became more hostile and racism in Britain gained ground, he found himself increasingly marginalised and began to work mostly from Jamaica and Florida in the US. He exhibited in a solo show at the Commonwealth Institute of Art in London in 1981 but it wasn't till after his death in 1990 that his work received the critical attention that it was due. Exhibitions of his work have been held most recently at Tate Britain (2023-4); Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada; Glasgow Museums, Scotland; Barbican Art Gallery, London (all 2022); Somerset House (2021); Perez Museum, Miami, US (2021).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

Artist

Aubrey Williams (1926 - 1990)

Title

Quartet No.11, Opus 122 (Shostakovich series)

Date

1981

Dimensions

height: 1232cm width: 203cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the October Gallery, April 2024

Provenance

October Gallery, London UK; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection 22 April 2024

GAC number

19302