FRED WILLIAMS Australian, 1927-1982

Williams’s gouaches, whilst important works in their own right, were also a means for him of consolidating and refining his thoughts about painting and about the direction his major oil paintings were taking. In the early 1970s, through the technique and scale of the gouaches, he was able to search for completely new avenues for his vision and experiment with very different formats. ‘The strip panel gouaches developed in 1969 and, as a format, culminated in the Adelaide Festival Theatre mural of 1973’. ¹ You Yangs displays all the panoramic possibilities of the double strip format.

We are grateful to Mrs Lyn Williams for assistance in cataloguing this work.


1. Lindsay, R. and Zdanowicz, I., Fred Williams: Works in the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1980, p. 56; for a similar work, You Yangs 1973, in the National Gallery of Victoria, see cat. 41.