William Crozier was educated at the Glasgow School of Art (1949-53). On graduating he spent time in Paris and Dublin before settling in London, where he quickly gained great notoriety for his work. By 1961 William Crozier was widely seen as one of the most exciting artists in London. Soho was his habitual haunt with fellow raconteurs William Irvine, Robert MacBryde, Robert Colquhoun, and intermittent comrades Francis Bacon, William Turnbull, and Eduardo Paolozzi. His first solo exhibition was in 1960 at the Drian Gallery, followed by another in 1961, and then three shows in consecutive years from 1962 at Arthur Tooth & Sons. In the introduction to Crozier’s 1961 Drian show, G. M. Butcher wrote, “if there is one thing that Crozier wishes to get across in all his painting, it is a mood of fear, anxiety, unease. This is his personal reaction to the world as it is - where savagery is only just beneath the surface.”

Profoundly affected by post-war existential philosophy, Crozier consciously allied himself and his work with contemporary European art throughout the 1950s and 1960s, towards painters such as Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung and Nicolas de Staël. Extended stays in Paris in 1947, 1950, and 1953 were formational experiences: “To be in Paris then was to be at the centre of the world. Anyone who was not young in 1949 and who did not sit in the Café Flore or the Deux Maggots, where Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were as gods, simply cannot appreciate the sheer excitement that enveloped the young of Europe emotionally, physically and intellectually.”

Crozier taught at the Bath Academy of Art, the Central School of Art and Design, the Studio School in New York and finally at Winchester School of Art. In 1973 he became an Irish citizen, having been born to Irish parents, and lived between homes in West Cork and Hampshire. In 1991 the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork and the Royal Hibernian Academy, of which he was an honorary member, curated a retrospective of his work. Crozier was awarded the Premio Lissone in Milan and the Oireachtas Gold medal for Painting in Dublin in 1994. A major retrospective is planned for 2017 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

Crozier spent 1963 in southern Spain with the Irish poet Anthony Cronin, a stay that would prove pivotal to Crozier’s development as an artist due to both the landscape and culture. Crozier became fascinated by Spanish religious festivals such as 'Semana Santa' and 'Dia de los Muertos', which celebrated death with joyous and colourful carnival, and the Moorish roots of much Andalusian life including gypsy and flamenco dancing. In the Spanish town of Alhaurin, Crozier was inspired by the folk-art engravings of 'calveras', skeletal figures in contemporary dress, a Hispanic form of the 'danse macabre' by Mexican engraver Jose Gaudalupe Posada (1852-1913).

On his return to the UK, he began a series of skeletal paintings which anticipated the 'New Expressionist' German painters of the 1980s, and which were influenced by Crozier's visits to Auschwitz and Belsen. A visit to Bergen-Belsen, the infamous concentration camp outside Hanover, in the 1960s left an indelible mark. As Philip Vann commented, for Crozier, ‘The skeleton is still very much a sentient human being: vulnerable, dignified, alone and abandoned in a landscape of astonishing beauty.'