Focus on this artwork and explore the Background.
Williams' interest in the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas first developed while he was living and working among the Warao people in the north-west region of Guyana (now Region One) in the 1940s.  Although he had been painting and drawing for many years, he claimed that it was among the Warao that he "discovered [him]self as an artist" and "started to understand what art really is".  This experience triggered an involvement with pre-Columbian art and artefacts that he described in 1987 as "the core of his artistic activity". Williams found a precedent for the kinds of abstraction he used in his own paintings in pre-Columbian arts and, across the years, repeatedly incorporated images, iconography and motifs drawn from these arts into his work.By 1981, Williams was working mainly in a studio in Florida, while maintaining bases in the United Kingdom and Jamaica. He was working towards the completion of another large series of paintings, Shostakovich (1969-1981), which was exhibited for the first time in October of that year.
Shostakovich (1969-1981) iconography Warao Guyana Region One Florida Warao people pre-Columbian Jamaica