William T.
Williams
(b 1942)
HKL Portfolio, 1970; portfolio of four original serigraphs screen printed on Rives BFK, 16 x 12 inches (image), 23-1/2 x 17-1/2 inches (sheet), each signed and numbered 6/144 in pencil. Printed By Charles Cardinale, Fine Creations, Inc., New York. Published By HKL, Ltd., New York.
untitled
c. 1971
acrylic and graphite on paper
43-1/2 x 33 inches
signed
William T. Williams is a pivotal figure in postwar American abstraction whose dynamic compositions merge hard-edge geometry with the improvisational energy of jazz and the sensibilities of African American cultural expression. Born in Cross Creek, North Carolina, and raised in New York City, Williams studied at Pratt Institute (B.F.A., 1966). He received his M.F.A. from Yale University in 1968, where he was mentored by Richard Lindner, Neil Welliver, and Alex Katz. He quickly became associated with a generation of Black abstract painters who redefined the possibilities of nonrepresentational art in the late 1960s and 1970s.
In 1968, Williams was among the founding artists of Smokehouse Associates, a collective that used large-scale public murals in Harlem to assert a Black modernist presence within the urban landscape. His first solo exhibition, at Reese Palley Gallery in 1968, launched a career marked by formal rigor and lyrical intensity. That same year, he was included in the Whitney Museum’s Annual Exhibition, making him one of the youngest artists in that landmark survey.
Williams’ paintings and prints are characterized by their vivid interplay of color, line, and structure, forms that evoke both the precision of architecture and the improvisation of music. The works in this collection exemplify his command of rhythm and interval: bold diagonals, arcs, and intersecting planes pulse with a syncopated momentum that recalls the polyrhythms of jazz drumming.
While rooted in the legacy of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting, Williams’ art also draws on African American cultural idioms, particularly the quilt-like patterning and spatial balance seen in Southern craft traditions. His layered geometries suggest both movement and memory, bridging the personal and the universal.
Williams’ work has been the subject of major retrospectives, including William T. Williams: A Sense of Place at the Studio Museum in Harlem (1979) and William T. Williams: Tension to the Edge at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery (2022). His paintings and prints are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery, among many others.
In addition to his studio practice, Williams has been a dedicated educator, serving as a longtime professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, where he influenced generations of artists. In 2022, he was awarded the College Art Association’s Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in recognition of his profound contributions to American abstraction.
Selected Exhibitions
The Deluxe Show, De Luxe, Houston, TX, 1971
Edwards, Gilliam, Williams: Interconnections, Wabash Transit Gallery, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, 1972 (curated by Emilio Cruz)
Directions in Afro-American Art, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, NY, 1974
Recent Works by Manuel Hughes, William T. Williams and Jack Whitten, Alternative Center for International Arts, NY, 1979
Jus' Jass: Correlations of Painting and Afro-American Classical Music, Kenkeleba House, NY, 1983
Choosing: An Exhibit of Changing Perspectives in Modern Art and Art Criticism by Black Americans, 1925-1985, Hampton University, VA, 1985
The Search for Freedom: African American Abstract Painting 1945-1975, Kenkeleba House, NY, 1991
WILLIAM T. WILLIAMS: Fourteen Paintings, Montclair Art Museum, NJ, 1992
WILLIAM T. WILLIAMS: Works on Paper, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 1992
WILLIAM T. WILLIAMS: A Twentieth Century Master - Works on Paper, Sherry Washington Gallery, Detroit, MI, 1994
Successions: Prints by African-American Artists from the Jean and Robert Steele Collection, University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, MD, 2002
Energy, Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction, 1964-1980, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 2006
WILLIAM T. WILLIAMS: Variations on Themes, David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 2010
The Chemistry of Color: Contemporary African-American Artists, Columbia Museum of Art, SC, 2010
“My first art teacher was my grandmother. And what I mean by that is the experience of her quilts, the experience of a work ethic. I grew up on a small sharecropping farm in the South, a tobacco farm. And after the ’bacco was cured, my grandmother would grade it. You graded in terms of the texture of the surface and the coloration of the leaves after they’d been in the barn. There’s a subtlety and nuance within that, which she taught me through trial and error — looking, feeling, touching. I always say it was my first art education: hands-on hard work.”
From left: Melvin Edwards, William T. Williams and Sam Gilliam, photographed in Gilliam’s studio in Washington, D.C., on March 10, 2022.Credit: Jared Soares
Exodus
c. 1970
color screen print on wove paper
16 x 11-1/2 inches, full margins
signed, titled, and numbered, 84/160