Neil Williams
Spanierman Gallery, LLC, at East Hampton: July 2-August 3, 2009
Art Hamptons: July 10-12, 2009
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BIOGRAPHY and CV - NEIL WILLIAMS (1934-1988)
An important exponent of Minimal and Systemic painting, Neil Williams was born in Bluff, Utah, in 1934. He undertook his formal training at the California School of Fine Arts, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1959. One of the first American artists to investigate the aesthetic potential of the irregularly shaped canvas, he initially depicted hard-edged geometric forms, but eventually turned to a painterly abstract style.
Williams began exhibiting his work in New York City in 1960 and continued to do so throughout his career. His first solo show was held at the Green Gallery in Manhattan in 1964. During that same year, he participated in the exhibition, The Shaped Canvas, organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where his work hung alongside that of artists such as Frank Stella and Paul Feeley. In the ensuing years, Williams’s paintings appeared in a number of group shows devoted to advanced trends in American art, including Systemic Painting, curated by Lawrence Alloway and held at the Guggenheim in 1966. He also had one-man exhibitions at the André Emmerich Gallery in New York and the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles.
Although Williams exhibited regularly in New York and could often be seen at the legendary Max’s Kansas City, he gradually distanced himself from the downtown art scene, spending the majority of his time in Sagaponack, New York, where he shared a studio with Stella.
By the early 1970s, Williams had evolved a “technique of sculptural collage whereby he applied the dried skin of acrylic paint directly to the canvas,” while continuing to emphasize the structural integrity of the support.1 He later created colorful abstractions in which he synthesized landscape and floral elements inspired by the ambiance he encountered on visits to Brazil; as one critic put it: “In Brazil Williams fused the tropical and the urban concrete.”2
In addition to his activity as a painter, Williams taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York and held guest professorships at Metro State College in Denver and at Syracuse University. A filmmaker as well, he also developed several screenplays, including a script that dealt with the contemporary history of the Navaho tribe.
In 1986, a retrospective of Williams’s work was held at the Clocktower, a well-known alternative gallery in New York. Unfortunately, his career was cut short by his untimely death in New York on March 25th 1988 at the age of fifty-three. Described as an “artist’s artist,” he was not well known to the general public, but was greatly admired by his peers.3
Examples of Williams’s work can be found in public collections throughout the United States, including the Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania; the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin; the MIT-List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Denver Art Museum; the Guild Hall Museum of East Hampton, East Hampton, New York; the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. A posthumous exhibition of Williams’s work was held at the Galleria Luisa Strina in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1989.
CL
The essay herein is the property of Spanierman Gallery and is copyrighted by Spanierman Gallery and may not be reproduced in whole or in part, without written permission from Spanierman Gallery nor shown or communicated to anyone without due credit being given to Spanierman Gallery.
1 Edward Leffingwell, “Sao Paulo Diary,” Art in America 77 (January 1989): 55.
3 “Neil Williams, Painter On Shapes Canvas, 53,” New York Times, 30 March 1988.
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Neil Williams CV
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBTIONS
City Lights Book Store, San Francisco, California, 1959.
Green Gallery, New York, 1964.
Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 1966.
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, 1966-68.
Lo Giudice Gallery, New York, 1973.
Walter Kelly Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, 1973-74.
Metro State College, Denver, Colorado, 1975.
Galeria Luisa Strina, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1982.
The Clocktower Gallery, New York, 1986.
Galeria Luisa Strina, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1988.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Richmond, California, Annual Exhibition 0/ Painting and Sculpture, 1959.
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1964.
Byron Gallery, New York, 1964.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Shaped Canvas, 1964.
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, The Shaped Canvas, 1964.
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1964.
Oberlin College, Ohio, Young Americans, 1965.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Recent Acquisitions, 1965.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Systemic Painting, 1966.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Vormen van der Kleur (Shapes a/Color), 1966-67.
Formen und der Farbe, Wurtenburgiescher Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany, 1967.
Kunsthalle, Bern, Switzerland, 1967.
Pittsburgh International Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pennsylvania, 1967.
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois, Decade Seven: Contemporary American Art, 1967.
Whitney Museum, Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, 1967.
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, Painting: Out from the Wall, 1968.
Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, New York, Current Minimal Painting, 1969.
Whitney Museum of American Art New York, Biennial Exhibition a/Painting and Sculpture, 1972.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Six Artists, 1973.
Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York, Four Artists, 1977.
Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York, The Parrish Invitational, 1983.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
“ABC to Erotic,” Art in America 5 (September 1966).
“Art in New York,” Time Magazine (June 3, 1968).
Jacqueline Barnitz, “Mid-Monthly Review of Arts Exhibitions in New York Galleries
and Museums,” Arts Magazine (June 1968).
Gregory Battcock, Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968).
Scott Burton, “Reviews and Previews,” Art News (September 1968).
Robert Creeley, “A Way to Go, Frank Stella,” The Lugano Review 1 (Summer 1965), 3-4.
John Gruen, “Art in New York,” (June 10, 1968).
Richard Hirch, “Private Affinities and Public Uses: The Michener Collection,” Arts 40
(May, 1966), 7.
Rosalind Krauss, “Letter to the Editor,” ArtForum 5 (December 1966).
Edward Leffingwell, “Neil Williams: Herança Valiosa,” GaleriaRevista de Arte 9 (1988).
Edward Leffingwell, “Report from Brazil: Sao Paulo Diary,” Art in America (January
1989).
Lucy Lippard, “Perverse Prospective,” Art International 10 (March 1967).
James R. Mellow, “New York Letter,” Art International 12 (September 1968).
“Obituaries,” Art in America (May 1988).
“Obituaries,” New York Times (March 1988).
John Perreault, “A Minimal Future,” Arts 41 (1967).
Robert Pincus Witten, “Systemic Painting, A Well Chosen Few Is Chosen by Lawrence
Alloway,” Art/arum 5 (November 1966).
Barbara Rose, “How to Murder an Avant Guard,” Artforum 4 (November 1965).
Pierre Schneider, “The Singular Present,” Art News Annual 31 (1966).
Vassar College Catalogue, Concept, 1969.
Kurt Von Meier, “Los Angeles Letter,” Art International 10.
AWARDS
National Arts Council
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
COLLECTIONS
Harry Abrams
The Abrams Family Foundation
The June Anderson Esteve Estate
Maciej Babinski
Leopold Baumblatt
Mrs. Robert Benjamin
Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Bethany
Charles and Marilu Bosworth
The Brasilinvest Corporation
Barbara Brown
John Chamberlain
Mary June Esteve Deprez
Henry M. di Suvero
Mark di Suvero
Virginia Dwan
Mr. and Mrs. George Esteve
Kim Esteve
Antonio Carlos Figueiredo Ferraz
Penny and James Stewart Granger
Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York
Joseph Hirshorn
Donald Judd
The J. Patrick Lannan Collection
Mr. and Mrs. Garritt Lansing
Johanna Lawrenson
Mrs. Albert A. List
Joe Lo Giudice
Eduardo Longo
Mimi Lutz
Augusto Livio Malzoni
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
Robert Meyer
James A. Michener
Carmo and Jovelino Mineiro
Bruno and Janete Musatti
Forrest Myers
Juti Nielson
Larry Poons
Alan Power
Ted Power
John Powers
The Richmond Museum, California
The B. Michael Ruskin Estate
Charles Rydell
Elizabeth Ryland Esteve
Ethel Scull
Mr. and Mrs. Horace Solomon
Michael Solomon
Frank Stella
Luisa Strina
Sylvia Bastos Tigre
Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine
Dr. Reider Wennesland
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
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