Neil Williams never wanted a ‘career’ in art, as it is popularly understood; he disdained both the product and the process. That glamour was incompatible with the way he conceived our time on this planet.

If one were to essentialize his values and enthusiasms, one word comes to mind with regard both to his art and his persona – authenticity. Northing phony, nothing flashy. And further, this authenticity didn’t arise arbitrarily or perversely; it came about through both his heritage and the memories of his early years among the Navajo of the southwestern United States.

The other great fact of his life was his introduction in the mid-sixties to the work of Frank Stella and his compatriots in the radical move away from the painted rectangle. Neil came to New York fresh from his time in art school in San Francisco and his slate was clean. His work was soon included in several shows in the mid-sixties organized around the "Shaped Canvas" theme. Frank Stella and I organized an exhibition of ten artists for the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1964; Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Darby Bannard, Will Insley, Chick Hinman, Neil Williams and a few more. During those years Neil could often be seen about the artists’ bars, always with the most breathtaking women.

In the seventies Neil took his life and his gift as an artist in his own two hands and re-established himself in the year around Hamptons, keeping in touch with a very few of his art colleagues: Frank Stella, John Chamberlain and Richard Bellamy. The work of these years wasn’t shown much it was with great joyous shock that I saw a large recent painting by Neil in Patrick Lannan’s large scale collection on a gutted movie theatre in Palm Beach.

Henry Geldzahler

Art Historian