Neil Williams

Neil Williams (1934 – March 28, 1988), was an American painter and educator. Williams was an abstract painter primarily known for his pioneering work with shaped canvases in the early 1960s. His paintings of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are associated with geometric abstraction, hard-edge painting, color field, and lyrical abstraction, although he did not readily subscribe to any category for his work. He taught fine arts at the School of Visual Arts, from the late 1970s until the early 1980s.

Biography Williams was born in 1934, in Bluff, Utah. He also participated in several group exhibitions at museums including 2 Whitney Museum of American Art annuals in 1967 and 1973; the Park Place Gallery and galleries and museums elsewhere. In 1968 he was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Williams had four more solo exhibitions in New York during the 1970s. By 1982 he had a solo exhibition in Brazil and decided to move there permanently. In 1986 he had a career retrospective in the historic Clocktower Gallery in New York City, (currently directed by Alanna Heiss, founder and former Director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, Queens).