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.