Walter H. Williams
Walter Henry Williams Jr. (1920–1998) was an African American-born artist, painter, printmaker and ceramicist who became a Danish citizen later in his life.
The subjects of his artwork evolved from urban street scenes straight out of his New York upbringing to the metaphorical images of rural Black children playing in fields of sunflowers, butterflies and shacks.
In 1948, he decided to pursue art and joined a group of artists and musicians, including Charlie "Bird" Parker, in Greenwich Village in New York.
In 1953, he won a third prize gold medal for his painting “On the Railing” in the fourth annual exhibit for artists and students of New York City at the Harlem Branch of the YWCA.
[12] That same year, he participated in a group show at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 21st annual exhibition of contemporary artists.
He submitted a painting titled “Store Front Christ.” [13][14] The next year, he had a solo exhibit at the Roko Gallery in New York.
[15][16][5] Williams’ early paintings depicted the life of Black people in the neighborhoods and in the jazz clubs around Brooklyn and Harlem where he grew up.
He left for Denmark in 1956 and often visited its island of Bornholm where he saw landscapes for the first time, his second wife Marlena, a ceramicist and Danish citizen, noted.
[2] The trip changed the trajectory of his works, shifting the subjects from city streets to country fields with symbolic elements that denoted rebirth and freedom.
These new images of children in fields, sunflowers, butterflies, blackbirds and a bright sun appeared often in William's subsequent works, each taking on the theme of a southern landscape, the title of one of his paintings.
A girl picks flowers and she witnesses the sumptuous smells of a thousand perfumes and colorful dreams … In all these visionary happenings, Walter Williams makes the joy of life unending.”[2]Williams also painted several versions of Madonna – a woodcut in 1965 and a colored pencil drawing in 1967.
He told a Mexican reporter that “freedom from racial prejudice was essential” for him to develop as a person and an artist, an atmosphere he found in Mexico but not his native America.
[16] He was back in the United States in 1965 when his print “Girl with Butterflies #2” was purchased by the Smithsonian Institution for the Executive Wing of the White House under President Lyndon Johnson.
[29][30] During his stay, his works were shown at the university, the Louisville (KY) Art Workshop (where most of the works were his woodcuts), the Parthenon (Nashville), Brooks Memorial Art Gallery (Memphis), Jackson (MS) State University, Studio 22 (Chicago), Lee Nordness Galleries (NY), Mount Holyoke College (MA) and Stephens College (MO).
[35][36] At the end of his residency at Fisk, he assembled a farewell exhibit of his paintings, color woodcuts and pottery at the school.
[2] In 1979, Williams wrote a note to Driskell stating that he was preparing some works to submit to the Studio Museum in Harlem for an upcoming show titled “An Ocean Apart: American Artists Abroad.”[37] The show opened in 1982 and included works by Williams, Herbert Gentry, Sam Middleton and Clifford Jackson.
I am an artist who is full of love for the world and all the images it holds.”[2]A devastating fire in 1980 destroyed Williams' studio, and all of his paintings and prints were lost.
