Fred Williams' abstract paintings of the Australian bush and desert from the 1960s represented the most significant development in landscape painting since the impressionism of the Heidelberg School in the late 19th century. With the artist capturing the land and light in images that responded to a experience of the environment.
Read MoreWilliams attended the National Gallery of Victoria School, Melbourne (1944-49) and the George Bell Art School, Melbourne (1946-50), travelling to London and attending the Chelsea Art School (1951-55) and Central School of Arts and Crafts (1954-56).
He returned to Australia in 1957 and by the early 1960s had emerged as Australia's most important contemporary painter, making a decisive break with familiar landscape traditions, reducing the space and iconography on the surface of the picture plane and using sparse, interconnected patterns that absorbed the bush and light of the Australian outback in painterly abstract works.
Williams was the recipient of the Wynne prize in 1966 and 1976, and in 1992 a retrospect of his work: Fred Williams A Working Method, was held at the National Gallery of Victoria.
His work is held at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and many significant international collections around the world.