WILSHIRE CENTER

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke once described works of art as “an artist’s epitome; the knot in the rosary at which his life recites a prayer.” Guy Williams’ series of small collage studies titled “Stations of the Square” is invested with a comparable attitude of devotion and discipline. This suite of quiet meditations, which dates from 1982, is clearly the heart that pumps blood to Williams’ larger paintings, six of which are also on view here.

A California artist at mid-career, Williams fashions brightly colored geometric compositions built around criss-crossing networks of cubes and split spheres. His work has been described as everything from Modernist Baroque to Bauhaus, but he tips his hand here as far as revealing who’s influenced him by naming a painting after the seminal Russian Constructivist Rodchenko.

Williams’ tie to Constructivism is evident in that his work conducts a restrained inquiry into ideas of color and shape, employs some of the mechanical stylistic tics common to industrial design, and exudes the whistle-while-you-work cheerfulness of a modern populist. The largest work on view here is, in fact, evocative of a high-tech WPA mural. Titled “San Marcos Pass,” this massive painting is rendered in “peoples” colors (black, white, red and tan) and is composed in a galvanizing sweep of forward motion.

A comment by Williams in a gallery press piece suggests that he takes a highly romantic view of his work, which is rooted in mathematics. “Before man scratched a square onto the dirt with a stick, that shape never existed,” says Williams. “There is nothing more man-made and consequently more natural than geometry.” That Williams feels himself to be on cozy terms with geometry is clear in his work; it’s crisp and formal, yet friendly. (Jan Baum Gallery, 170 S. La Brea Ave, to May 3.)