Peter Williams (painter)

Peter Williams died in Wilmington, Delaware, on August 19, 2021, at the age of 69.

While in New Mexico, a major automobile accident led to the amputation of his right leg above the knee, forcing him to walk using arm crutches for the remainder of his life. In 2020, Williams retired from his position as a professor at the University of Delaware.

In 2018 he was inducted into the National Academy of Design, in 2020 he received the Artists' Legacy Foundation Award, and in 2021 he was awarded The American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award, and a few months later the Guggenheim Fellowship.

Williams received the Ford Foundation Fellowship in 1985. In 1996 he worked on the Mercedes Benz Project in Detroit, Michigan; he and his students worked on a large project of 11,000 square feet, painting walls, ceiling, and floor for the Mercedes-Benz display that was shown in Detroit, Barcelona, and Frankfurt. In 2002, he participated in the Whitney Biennial.

Peter Beresford Williams (March 18, 1952 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, educator, and social activist. His paintings have been described by writer and artist William Eckhardt Kohler as "in no particular order: hallucinogenic, acerbic, pained, beautiful, confessional, obsessive, critical, jarring, wild, weird, and profoundly human". In 2020, Williams received the Artists' Legacy Foundation Artist Award.

Peter Beresford Williams was born on March 18, 1952, in Suffern, New York, and grew up in Nyack, New York. He had his first solo show at the Pat Merenstein Gallery in Nyack at the age of 17. Soon after his work was exhibited at other venues, including the Woodstock Music Festival. He graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1975 with a B.F.A, and in 1987 received his M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore, Maryland.