Remerro Trotsky

Remerro “Trotsky” Williams (b. 1953, Washington, DC) is an artist whose figurative work across painting, murals, installation, and assemblage dedicates itself to social justice. His practice is fundamentally informed by witnessing the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, during which Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his speech “I Have a Dream.” Williams has reflected, “I want my legacy to be these powerful images from American history, which I think should be paid attention to.”

Williams trained as an artist at the Hochschule der Künste in West Berlin and at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He worked for a time in France, England, and Germany before returning to the US, where he lived in New York City for many years. His graceful, dynamic life studies— capturing weightlifters, club dancers, jazz musicians, and walkers on the street—draw from urban environments, photographs, and live models, influenced by the figuration of George Grosz and American painters including George Bellows and Reginald Marsh. Later in his career, Williams began to experiment with installation and mixed media, at times visually punning on familiar phrases as in his 1992 work Law Suit, for which he filled garment bags with legal documents. 

Williams is best known for his 1989 mural, Dancing Couple, which was spotted outside of a Chinese restaurant in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan after a recording session. With Williams’s blessing, the work was used as the cover art for Dylan’s twenty-sixth album Oh Mercy (1989). The same year, Williams learned that he was HIV-positive. Like many who received their diagnosis in that decade, he began to live hedonistically, believing his lease on life was soon to end. Progressively, however, he realized that death would not come. Through his work, he has come to reflect that, after being diagnosed as HIV-positive, there is still beauty and life.