Fred Williams
The London Drawings
Free entry
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square
Level 3
21 Oct 22 – 29 Jan 23
This exhibition presents Fred Williams’s drawings from his formative London years (1952–56) when he first came to maturity as an artist. Williams is celebrated as one of Australia’s most significant landscape painters whose distinctive, abstracted paintings helped shape Australians’ vision of their country. Yet Williams’s early commitment to drawing and painting the human figure is little known, as is his accomplishment as a draughtsman and the full range and power of his drawing oeuvre. These aspects of his work are explored in this first exhibition dedicated to Williams’s London period, which will present major series of drawings made at Regent’s Park Zoo and in London’s music halls and on the city’s streets.
Williams’s extraordinary observational skills and ability to capture the world around him are revealed in works that provide fascinating insight into both post-war London and the artistic processes of one of Australia’s most significant artists. Drawing, Williams stated late in his life, is ‘the final critical analysis of any artist’s work … drawing exposes all’.
The NGV warmly thanks Lyn Williams AM and Family for their instrumental contribution.
(Elephant) 1953
conté crayon
21.6 x 28.0 cm irreg. (image) 25.2 x 31.8 cm irreg. (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by Mrs Lyn Williams, Founder Benefactor, 1988
P79-1988
© Estate of Fred Williams