Tate © The estate of Fred Williams
Fred Williams was the most important Australian artist of his generation. This painting is one
of five generously presented to Tate by the
artist’s widow Lyn and represents his mature
career. The Australian landscape was Williams’s
principal theme and the sparse expanses of the places he chose to paint were suited to an
almost abstract style. Riverbed D combines
Williams’s signature theme of the course of a
barren river through the landscape, familiar from
his renowned Dry Creek Bed paintings, with a
spareness of composition. This work shows a
subtleness in Williams’s negotiation between
the representation of landscape and the basic
terms of reference of modernist painting.
Daniel Buren
Pablo Picasso
Fred Williams
Marlene Dumas
Marlene Dumas
Carsten Höller
Gabriel Orozco
Stan Douglas
Jeff Wall