Aubrey Williams, Chak Mool, c.1967

Aubrey Williams 1926-1990

Chak Mool, c.1967

Oil on canvas

45 1/4 x 55 1/2 in
115 x 141 cm

Titled CHAK MOOL

The Guyanese artist Aubrey Williams (1926-1990) was a founding member of the Caribbean Artists Movement in London, which from 1966 until its dissolution in 1972 provided a cultural hub in...

The Guyanese artist Aubrey Williams (1926-1990) was a founding member of the Caribbean Artists Movement in London, which from 1966 until its dissolution in 1972 provided a cultural hub in the metropolis for London-based Caribbean artists and intellectuals to organise events and activities promoting non-western art.

Williams drew inspiration from
middle American imagery and symbolism of Mayan, and Aztec civilisations,
Guatemalan and
Venezuelan imagery, science fiction, classical music and the abstract
expressionist painters. In Mayan culture, the reclining figure of Chacmool
represents the connection between physical and supernatural realms, serving as
a vessel for offerings and a messenger between worlds. Regarded as a deity in
cultural mythology, Chacmool symbolised the god of rain and was an important
feature of daily agricultural life. Chak Mool (c.1967) is one of an earlier
series of Williams’s exploration of Mesoamerican referencing in his paintings
and is abstract in style with sculptural forms and loose geometries. Williams’s
Olmec-Maya series in the 1980s continued to be inspired by the colossal
heads of Chacmool with his investigation of this imagery emphasising a more
figurative approach.

Williams’s paintings and archives are accessible in public collections including Tate Britain, London; Arts Council England, the Natural History Museum, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Provenance

Purchased directly from the artist

By descent

of 24

Frieze Masters: Émigré: Stand E11, Regent's Park, London

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