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WILLIAM T.WILLIAMS (1942 - )
Eastern Star
.
Acrylic on canvas, 1971. 2032x1524 mm; 84x60 inches. Titled and dated in ink, verso on the
stretcher bars.
Provenance: the artist; Reese-Palley Gallery; private New York collection. This work was bought
from the artist’s first solo gallery exhibition in NewYork by the current owner.
Eastern Star
, a very large and exciting work, is the first painting by this important African-American
artist to come to auction. This painting is an excellent example of William T.Williams’s unique
abstract vision—an elegant, layered Minimalist abstraction, infused with the geometries of jazz and
non-Western cultures.
Williams’s talents had been recognized from an early age. He was accepted in the summer before
his senior year at Pratt Institute to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture before receiving
his B.A. in 1966.After earning his M.F.A. fromYale University in 1968, he participated in
The Black
Artist in America: A Symposium
, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.Williams’s
abstract painting achieved early institutional recognition when the Museum of Modern Art, New
York, purchased his 1969 painting
Elbert Jackson L.A.M.F, Part II
. His paintings were also included
in such important exhibitions as the Studio Museum in Harlem’s
Inaugural Show
, the Whitney
Biennial and
New Acquisitions
at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1970, both the Jewish Museum,
NewYork, and the Menil Collection, Houston, commissioned paintings.
The high key colors, diamonds and concentric curves of
Eastern Star
demonstrate the artist’s dualism
and his distinctive approach. Kellie Jones has noted howWilliams was caught between “an interest in
Color Field painting and interest in expressionism, and in trying to reconcile the two.”The formalism
of modernism and jazz often suggested a way to navigate the two tendencies.Williams’s concept
included the exhibition of these canvases which were installed along the walls of the Reese-Palley
Gallery side by side while jazz music played.The sold-out exhibition was a pivotal success that year
and for his career—theWhitney Museum of American Art, NewYork, exhibited his work again,AT&T
and General Mills purchased his art, and his work was featured in both
Life
and
Time
magazines.
In addition to his long career as a painter, for almost 40 years,Williams has taught at Brooklyn
College, the City University of New York as a Professor of Art. He has also received numerous
awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts
Awards, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award. Jones pp. 16-17; Powell/Reynolds pp. 235-6.
[75,000/100,000]