Denis Williams’s (1923 – 1998) December 1950 exhibition shortly after his return to London at the Gimpel Fils Gallery was a success. The exhibition earned him recognition and patronage in the London art world and forced British Guianese to look at his work without the biases of their allegiance to traditional forms and themes in art. And while the painting Human World (1950, see Eye on Art July 16) was acquired for the British Guiana National Art Collection arriving in 1956, the work that was being considered for Tate Britain (see Eye on Art July 9) was not.
Once again resident in London, Williams continued to show at the London and Paris Gimpel Fils galleries and in significant exhibitions around London including ‘Eleven British Painters: Recent Work’ at the Institute of Contemporary Art in 1953 and the watershed ‘This is Tomorrow’ at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956. According to the Whitechapel’s online archive, the exhibition responded to the new technologies of the 1950s and tasked the 38 participants, formed into 12 groups “[composed of] an architect, a designer, an artist and a theorist, [to] amalgamate their individual approaches and produce a work by deploying a new methodology.”
