Kiwi artist receives 50-year tribute
Mervyn Williams, now recognised as one of New Zealand’s greatest artists celebrated the past 50 years of his work with the launch of a new book at his exhibition.
Williams’ was a breakthrough abstract artist of his generation who began creating such individualistic pieces of artwork at only 15.
As a leading figure in his style of work today, it is hard to believe that Williams’ once had many skeptics doubting him.
“It has been very hard,” he says, “I have had times when I’ve felt just completely left out in the cold.”
He was first approached three years ago by Ed Hanfling, who had been interested in creating an art book of his work.
“I had no idea what he had done,” said Hanfling of Williams’ range of work, “ It was only then that I started to become interested, and the prospect of doing the book kind of lended itself.”
“People had found (it) quite astonishing that I was painting at that level in 1957”, Williams said of his earlier days as an artist.
Hanfling also commented on the refusal of acceptance of abstract art in Williams’ early days,
“If you were doing this kind of work in the sixties and seventies people would tend to ignore what you were doing or they would say, well it doesn’t look like New Zealand art.
The book, ‘Mervyn Williams from modernism to digital age’, had been endless work for nearly 75 year-old Williams.
The very first images chosen for the book date back to the late 1950’s, which was partly why production took as long as three years to complete.
Williams’ calls his style of work a simple rendering of the appearance of something, which he finds boring that already exists.
Hanfling described Williams’ work as being, “produced basically through a kind of old master technique, like the way that people painted in the renaissance or, you know, that kind of time period, that kind of very painstaking, meticulous style, and he’s simply applied it to a sort of abstract form.”
When asked about retirement, Williams commented,
“I mean, if I can stand up, I will work. In fact, even if I can’t stand up, I’ll still work.”
The exhibition took place at Gus Fisher gallery in Auckland over three weeks of Saturdays’, beginning week of September 6th.
The book may be purchased from selected art galleries for $135.00.
