Denis Williams was the first black artist to win critical acclaim in Britain. He was born and raised in Guyana, and his early promise as a painter earned him a scholarship to study art in London in 1946. He lived in the UK for the next ten years, where he taught fine art as a lecturer at the Central School of Art and the Slade School of Art, while becoming a protégé of Wyndham Lewis and exhibiting at the most prestigious galleries in London and Paris. His 1954 panel “Painting in Six Related Rhythms” earned him a major prize in the Young Contemporaries exhibition in 1955, sponsored by Lord Beaverbrook – the only abstract painting to do so.
Curated by John Leroux and organized by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.