Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
"African-American artist Walter Henry Williams was born in Brooklyn, New York, August 11, 1920. He studied art at the Brooklyn Museum Art School under Ben Shahn, Reuben Tam and Gregorio Prestopino under the G.I. Bill. He also spent a summer studying art at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. After graduating Williams won a Whitney fellowship to study in Mexico.
According to the ""History of African-American Artists"" by Bearden and Henderson, after Williams' four years of living in racially liberal Mexico he ""felt the freedom from racial prejudice was essential for his further development."" He then returned to the U.S. and began to travel to Denmark in 1959.
Williams moved to Copenhagen, Denmark and became a citizen in 1979. He returned briefly to the United States, where he completed a body of work informed by the experiences of being an African American living in the South. It was while he was in Copenhagen, however, that he created a series of colorful woodcuts of black children playing in fields of flowers. Walter Williams died in Copenhagen in June of 1998.
Williams was commissioned to do a number of prints for the International Graphic Arts Society (IGAS) in editions of 210. Half these works (100) were sold in the United States and the other half in Europe, 10 proofs were reserved for the artist. This gave Williams an international following that allowed him to continue to work as a printmaker. - Annex Gallery"