The work of one of Guyana's most outstanding artists came into topical focus again when Stabroek News Editor-in-Chief, David de Caires returned from a visit to the UK with the news that several Aubrey Williams' paintings were lying in the basement of a house in London.

It is cause for concern, since they include many very important pieces representing significant phases of the artist's work. Williams lived and worked in that house, which is still the home of his widow, Eve, but she is unlikely to be able to maintain and document all that work. There is a real threat of deterioration, and already a few of them might be in need of restoration.

It is imperative that rescue takes place if a great store of Guyana's national patrimony is not to be lost, buried in a damp basement in London. Britain itself would not have allowed that to be the fate of any of its great paintings, neither would Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany or any other European nation famous for the works of its artists, or famous because of the works of its artists.

The cost would be too great for the Guyana government alone, although they certainly have their role to play. An important place for private patronage is therefore obvious. Throughout the centuries, art has existed and survived in those very European nations because of patronage. Art has helped to make many nations great, therefore this significant portion of Guyana's heritage is too valuable to be left where it is.

It is hoped that as many of the paintings as possible will be bought by individuals, companies or institutions, and that as many of them as possible will be brought to Guyana. In the past, the National Bank of Industry and Commerce, in a very big way, the Booker Company (now Guysuco) and Courts have invested in Guyanese art, while it is a policy of Castellani House to acquire such work. It is now necessary for a combination of private and corporate purchases, and national institutional support to save these paintings.

Aubrey Williams (May 8, 1926 - April 27, 1990) belonged to the first order of artists in the Caribbean and was, without doubt, among the most important that Guyana has ever produced. He was born in Georgetown and lived in Bourda Street, home of his parents Walter and Mildred Williams. Like writer, Wilson Harris, who used to be a land surveyor and still maintains a working interest in quantum physics and mathematics (Chaos), Williams was trained in the applied sciences. He qualified in 1944 and first worked as an Agricultural Field Officer, soon becoming agricultural superintendent for the East Coast and cane farming officer for the colony. He went to Britain early in 1952, still functioning as an agriculturalist until he turned entirely to art in 1953. Apart from considerable time spent in Jamaica in the seventies, and other visits to North America and West Africa, his long career as a painter developed in England, venue of his marriage to his Guyanese fiancee, Eve, and birthplace of his daughter, Maridowa.

Starting in 1967, Williams was an early and active member of CAM, the Caribbean Artists Movement founded by writers Eddie Kamau Braithwaite, John La Rose and Andrew Salkey, who were soon joined by Wilson Harris and Williams. He became famous in the Caribbean for, among other works, his public art, viz the imposing Timehri murals at the airport in Guyana as well as the School of Hope mural and Christ with his Disciples in Kingston, Jamaica. In the last named, as well as in such paintings as the controversial Revolt (1960), Williams' Africanist sensibilities, also evident in his Guyana Myths suite, is most prominent. But his reputation as a major artist was largely made on his continuing study of Amerindian cosmology and the development of his own distinctive style. This is summed up by Stanley Greaves as "passionate" because of its vigour and particular uses of colour (often warm colours and black).

Williams' work is mainly abstract expressionist with, according to Greaves, a commitment to his home region and the expression of an identity. Greaves stresses an aspect of Williams' career in Europe which drove him to seek an identification with something South American, partly as a response to and fortification against the severe difficulties he constantly experienced getting his work exhibited in the big mainstream galleries in London. Although the famous Tate Gallery bought the complete set of sketches which were preliminary studies for his paintings, these houses had a habit of referring black outsiders like Williams to ethnic galleries such as Uhuru.

He certainly developed a deep interest in the culture of the Americas, including the Maya, and exhibiting the powerful influence of the Guyana interior. He articulated an interest in "an examination of the human predicament" with a special Caribbean slant. He wrote of his "wild hunger" to give expression to "the forces meeting in the Caribbean" which he felt would eventually "change this world pronouncedly." He explained that he had always been interested "in pre-Columbian Indians, and what has happened to them and what they've given to the world out of their lives." In addition, Anne Walmsley narrates that, in 1947, Williams went to work as agricultural officer in Hosororo where he lived for a while, learnt to speak Warrau and did anthropological and archaeological research.

The major 'groups' of Aubrey Williams' paintings which constitute one of the most important movements in Guyanese art include the murals, the Guyana Myths, the Maya paintings, the Bird series and the Shostakovich suite. The Amerindian paintings, which include the Olmec Maya series, account for most of the works. The Shostakovich paintings were inspired by the symphonies and quartets of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich and were "visual expressions" of the music. In 1981, Williams explained: "on hearing the finale of the first symphony of Dmitri thirty five years ago, I realised a sonic connection with a new well-spring of this style of human consciousness we call ART." Much later, he made many attempts "to rewrite the music in visual terms."

Anne Walmsley, the leading scholar on Williams, if not on Guyanese art as a whole, traces this artist's biography in a very substantial document. It is edited by Andrew Dempsey, Gilane Tawadros and Maridowa Williams, and was published by the Institute of International Visual Arts on the occasion of the Aubrey Williams' exhibition at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1998. It contains very interesting accounts of Williams' movement into art, which began, like so many of Guyana's foremost artists, at the feet of E R Burrowes in the Working People's Art Class. Williams was 12 when he joined and very keen, but he was not to pursue art as a career until he was 27.

Although he was not a politician and was never a party member, he raised the political consciousness of farmers whose associations the Marxist PPP began to recognize as 'farmers communes.' The colonial security took to secretly investigating him. The colony grew so hot for him that, in late 1951, his friends in the PPP advised him to leave the country. He went to Britain in 1952, took up a scholarship in Agricultural Engineering at Leicester University, but, concluding that they had nothing new to teach him, discontinued. Next, he spent more than a year at St Martin's School of Art in 1953-1954, got married and did not continue.

Williams told Rashaeed Araeen in 1987 of his meeting with the great Pablo Picasso to whom he was introduced by the celebrated writer, Albert Camus in 1953. "He said that I had a very fine African head and he would like me to pose for him... He did not think of me as another artist... only as something he could use for his own work."

Williams' art has generated an impressive volume of scholarship. Stephanie Harvie did an M.Phil thesis on him at the University of Warwick, while, at David Dabydeen's suggestion, Dr Walmsley produced Guyana Dreaming, published before the artist's death in 1990. London, where Dr Walmsley ran an academic course on Guyanese art, Birmingham, Oxford, Kent and UWI are among other universities that took an interest in Williams. The many other publications on his work include pieces by Denis Williams, Elfrieda Bissember, Stewart Brown, Alim Hosein, Stanley Greaves, Wilson Harris and Jan Carew.