Self-Portrait at Easel 1960-1961

  

oil on composition board 102.0 x 69.5 cm

    
      The years 1959-61 were difficult ones for Williams. He felt he was losing step with his contemporaries, his exhibitions were getting hostile reviews and were commercially unsuccessful, and the direction of his work was itself unresolved. Yet paradoxically the Antipodean 'crisis' was necessary to Williams' artistic growth, forcing him to confront uncertainty in his work and to consolidate his artistic direction. His resentment towards the Antipodeans may have initially impacted on his confidence, but was to manifest itself in his work as a stance of opposition, and hence, of self-definition. In 1962 Rudy Komon took over management of Williams' work, allowing the artist some respite from the commercial anxieties which had dogged him for 2 years. Finally William's' road was proven the progressive one - in the 1960s he was held up by a generation of younger artists as the example of the truly modernist painter.    
             

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