Major Retrospectives

THE INNER ISLAND

April 28, 2023 - November, 2023

Villa Carmignac, Porquerolles Island, France

“The Inner Island” exhibition is organized by the @FondationCarmignac at Villa Carmignac in the Porquerolles Island in France. It is curated by Jean-Marie Gallais (@jmg.jmg).

#lîleintérieure #VillaCarmignac #FondationCarmignac

Ticketing:

Accueil - Billetterie - Fondation Carmignac (villa-carmignac.com)

FRANK WALTER

March 4th – April 15th, 2023

Rua James Holland 71, Barra Funda, São Paulo, Brasil

Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel is proud to announce the late Frank Walter’s (1926 – 2009) first exhibition in Brazil. His work has been established as one of the greatest in the Afro-Caribbean diaspora and recognized with a retrospective at the 57th Venice Biennial and major exhibitions in London, New York, Edinburgh, Frankfurt and Brussels. Apart from paintings, Walter produced wood carvings and wrote texts on aesthetics, politics, the relationship between man and nature, poems and opera. In his practice, he responded to motives in modern European art, explored cosmic space and painted environing Caribbean landscapes.

The works on view portray local horizons in Antigua and Barbuda, his native country, and spaces imagined by the artist. These small-scale paintings present a surprisingly expansive vision and elaborate compositional breadth. An acute observer of the natural world, Walter painted with what was at hand. His choice of small dimensions allowed him to work on his lap, on a desk or in the palm of his hand, as if taking notes. His landscapes, painted on the backs of photographs, reveal images of people and Antiguan hotels, making up a material register of Frank Walter’s memories.

The show is accompanied by an essay by Barbara Paca, curator and researcher responsible for Walter’s archive, catalog and estate, and a critical text by Kleber Amâncio, professor and historian.

Noteworthy solo exhibitions include By Land, Air, Home and Sea: The World of Frank Walter, David Zwirner Gallery, New York, USA (2022); Frank Walter’s Chessboard, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Belgium (2022); Music of the Spheres, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2021) and The Last Universal Man, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2017).

His work is included in important collections, such as Glenstone Foundation, Potomac, USA; Harry David Art Collection, Athens/Lagos/Nicosia; Hiscox Art Collection, London, UK; The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection, San Francisco, USA; Pinault Collection, Paris, France; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, USA; Museum Fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany; and the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada.

FRANK WALTER’S CHESSBOARD

August 25 - October 22, 2022

107 rue St-Georges, 1050 Brussels, Belgium

Xavier Hufkens is proud to present the first European gallery retrospective dedicated to the work of Antiguan painter, sculptor, writer, philosopher, and true Renaissance man, Frank Walter (1926-2009). Curated by Barbara Paca, O.B.E. and Nina Khrushcheva, the presentation charts the physical, emotional and socio-cultural trajectories of Walter’s life as he travels — both literally and figuratively — between two distinct worlds: that of the Caribbean and Northern Europe. His fierce intellect, political awareness, connection to nature and capacity for cosmic thought are all brought to the fore, revealing him as a polymath who, in the eyes of many, was born ahead of his time. Frank Walter largely worked in seclusion in middle age, meaning his ideas, writings and art were never fully appreciated during his lifetime. A radical reappraisal of his legacy in the decade since his death, however, has brought his work to a wider international audience. Today, Walter is recognised as being one of the most complex and visionary chroniclers of the twentieth century.

Walter’s biographical and creative journey is one of ascendence, transcendence and duality. As the offspring of both enslaved persons and German slave owners, he became the first Black man to hold the position of manager on Antigua; it was his ironic fate to manage a sugar plantation in 1948. Having broken production records by empowering his fellow workers with better pay, he embarked on a professional transatlantic voyage to England, Scotland and mainland Europe. He was a staunch civil rights advocate yet also saw himself, thanks in part to his obsessive genealogical research, as a genuine child of Europe. His self-portrait, in which he depicts himself as white, is particularly resonant in this respect. As an erudite and eloquent man, not to mention brilliant agriculturalist, artist and writer, he became increasingly dismayed at always having to justify his accomplishments to the white Europeans with whom he felt such an affinity. From 1953 to 1961 he lived in Europe and the U.K., where persistent racism had lasting effects on his mental health. Walter’s later abandonment of society to live as a semi-recluse in rural Antigua, however, was ultimately liberating. Forsaking all social conventions or expectations, he henceforth dedicated himself to his unique philosophical and prescient universe, to which he gave prolific expression in both words and images.

The exhibition draws the multiple strands of Frank Walter’s life together and explores the contradictions that shaped both his visual art and prose. While his story begins and ends in Antigua, his most formative years are closely linked to the Western hemisphere. Both Caribbean and European landscapes feature in the presentation as a testament to the artist’s abiding love for these contrasting places in his life. Christianity, which was introduced to Antigua by the European settlers, is still the majority religion on the island. While this is a connecting thread throughout Walter’s oeuvre, as seen in Self-Portrait as Christ on the Cross and Roman Catholic Cardinal, the artist was also immersed in myth and folklore, as evidenced by Vampire and the unique wooden carvings depicting ancient gods and figures from the indigenous Arawak culture. And while he largely avoided people in later life, he painted them constantly and compiled vast genealogies that link countless individuals across time, space and continents. Walter depicted local characters, such as Orange Woman, Two Tourist Guys and Sir George Walter Counting with his Fingers (a portrait of his brother, Sir George Walter, the premier of Antigua and Barbuda). But he also portrayed contemporary and historical representatives of the ruling elite and symbols of British culture, as exemplified by Adam and Eve (Charles and Diana), Cricket Player, and the small sculpture of King Charles II of England (to whom the artist believed he was related via the king’s mistress Lucy Walter). Yet Frank Walter was also a spiritually inquisitive man whose mind was unconstrained by the physical limitations and social constructs of the world he inhabited. Non-figurative works, such as Hypnosis and Abstract Red Birds provide a window onto the alternative, almost astral realms to which Walter travelled in his mind’s eye, while Abstract Stars illustrates the refined ordering principles, or psycho-geometries, that run like a leitmotiv through his work.

Another series sheds light on Frank Walter’s socio-political engagement and intimate bond with his community. The ‘slogan’ paintings — which sometimes feature excerpts from local advertisements, at other times the artist’s own declarations — shed light on early-modern Antiguan life. Statements such as Land for Sale, House for Rent and No Credit, for example, all bear witness to a country grappling with the aftershocks of the Second World War, its postcolonial history vis-à-vis the Commonwealth, not to mention the advent of mass tourism. In Walter’s mind, everything was interlinked: nature, society, economics, technology, politics and culture. And he instinctively understood this reality long before contemporary global crises opened our own eyes to the precariousness of these distinct but deeply interconnected systems. As both the embodiment of the post-colonial era and exemplar of a truly universal man, Frank Walter is an artist whose legacy allows us to see the world from an entirely unique perspective.

Francis Archibald Wentworth Walter (1926-2009) was honoured with a retrospective in Antigua and Barbuda’s inaugural National Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale and at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in 2020. His work has also been the subject of solo exhibitions at The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin (2013) and Harewood House, Leeds (2017). In 2019, his work was also featured at the 58th Venice Biennale as part of the group exhibition Find Yourself: Carnival and Resistance, exploring carnival in the culture of Antigua and Barbuda, curated by Barbara Paca and Nina Khrushcheva.

The Frank Walter Catalogue Raisonné project is currently being undertaken by the Walter family and Dr. Barbara Paca.

THADDEUS MOSLEY AND FRANK WALTER: SANCTUARY

July 10 - September 4, 2022

St James Catholic Church
70 Main Street, Thomaston, ME

Karma is honored to present Sanctuary, a collection of sculpture and painting by Thaddeus Mosley and Frank Walter.

Sanctuary spotlights the work of two artists of African descent, both born in 1926: Thaddeus Mosley and Frank Walter. Mosley, a sculptor, art teacher and son of a coal miner, from New Castle, Pennsylvania is known for his outsized abstract sculpture. Walter, born in the Caribbean island of Antigua and known for his paintings and wood works infused with the beauty of Antigua’s land, sea, and sky. Together, these artists share their vision of sanctuary, deeply informed by their relationship to the land.

Largely self-taught, Mosley specializes in sculpting salvaged wood—fallen trees, abandoned building material, timber from Pennsylvania sawmills—into large-scale abstract forms.  He finds inspiration in the art of the African diaspora, contemporary city life, nature and jazz. He has often said his influences range from Isamu Noguchi to Constantin Brâncuși to the Bamum, Dogon, Baoulé, Senufo, and the Dan of the African continent. Sanctuary features a collection of Mosley’s sculptures created during the last twenty years. Several bronze pieces will be on view outside of the Thomaston Church.  

For most of the 1960’s, Frank Walter found tranquility in the wilderness of his agricultural estate known as Mount Olympus. After years of intensive labor to prepare the property for farming, Walter was shattered when the government confiscated the land. Returning to city life in St. John’s he worked as a photographer, frame maker, and artist, but the urban conditions were at odds with his reserved personality. In 1993 he designed and built a home, art studio, and garden in a remote location on Bailey’s Hill in Antigua. There he created an environment embracing the natural world, complete with staggering views of the surrounding countryside and ocean, where he pursued his dreams as an artist, poet and composer  until his death in 2009. Throughout Walter’s life, art was his solace. He created more than 5,000 paintings, 1,000 drawings, 600 sculptures, 2,000 photographs, 468 hours of recordings, and a 50,000-page archive. 

It is no accident that this exhibition is offered in a church sanctuary in Thomaston, Maine—a church where generations of African Americans once prayed for revelation, relief, and ascension. Maybe the advent of this work is an answer to their prayers: an exhibition that explores the emanations of “sacred space” from the inner sanctum of two kindred spirits—Frank Walter and Thaddeus Mosley.    

—Brenda Jones and La Fleur Paysour

The Sanctuary exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with newly commissioned essays by Brenda Jones, Barbara Paca, and La Fleur Paysour, as well as an interview with Thaddeus Mosley and writing from the archives of Frank Walter.

BY LAND, AIR, HOME, AND SEA: THE WORLD OF FRANK WALTER. CURATED BY HILTON ALS DAVID ZWIRNER GALLERY, NY

June 2-July 29, 2022

34 East 69th Street, New York, USA

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Antiguan artist, writer, and polymath Frank Walter (1926–2009) at the gallery’s East 69th Street location in New York, curated by Hilton Als. This focused exhibition follows the solo show of Walter’s work presented at David Zwirner London in 2021 as well as the celebrated retrospectives held at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, in 2020 and the Pavilion of Antigua and Barbuda at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Organized in collaboration with the artist’s family, By Land, Air, Home, and Sea: The World of Frank Walter will center on Walter’s relationship to Antigua through a range of works that express his intimate connection to nature, landscape, and place.

As Als writes: I didn’t know a thing about [Frank Walter] that spring day in Venice [in 2017] when I arrived at the Pavilion of Antigua and Barbuda, but it was as if my eyes and my heart recognized him at once. Not only as a master artist but as a maker of a universe completely his own, grown out of the richness and debris that sometimes characterizes the life of a West Indian island dweller who is not rich, who must make a world out of making do. It seemed to me, that afternoon ... that Frank did everything, and wanted to do everything...Looking at his paintings, none very large, all detailed, was like looking through a scrim at someone else’s dreams. You could see every line, every color, but you had to peer past his poetic resolve not to tell everything, not to reveal all the world but to show all the world in fragments—a palm tree here, a house there, a dog there, a woman here—because it was truer to what he knew: taking the fragments that life gave him, building on that and making it whole...One gets the sense, in looking at Walter’s rivers and sky, that his perspectives were hard-won: he doesn’t just look at a bank and water, he pulls back, rather like a cinematographer—he had a great interest in photography, too—to get at the poetic essence of a scene. This requires aloneness, and silence: you have to listen to your own feet falling as you traverse this or that landscape, looking not for the right moment but for the decisive moment that Henri Cartier-Bresson told us about so long ago, and that remains vibrant in Walter’s work. His work is filled with correct moments, even when the image is obviously a work of the imagination, as in his portraits of people... In a way, the work is all about him, and how he saw in a very particular way the blood and joy of history as it filled his eyes and shaped his hands and mind [and it] is about the articulation of a particular kind of experience: race without ideology, fantasy without apology, the natural world on its own terms as it meets the particularities of the artist’s eye.

On the occasion of the exhibition, a catalog will be published by David Zwirner Books. Edited by Hilton Als, the publication will include new texts by Als, Peter Doig, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, Barbara Paca, and Charlie Porter. Frank Walter (1926–2009) created a vast body of work that encompasses a variety of media, styles, and formats. His paintings range from highly individualistic, vividly colored landscapes, to formally inventive and probing portraits, to systematic, abstract compositions, all rendered in the artist’s own absorbing palette and distinctive visual style. Walter was born Francis Archibald Wentworth Walter, on Horsford Hill, Antigua, in 1926. From a young age, Walter’s intellect was apparent to his family, and he quickly gained the admiration and respect of his local community. Feeling a deep connection to his native land, Walter studied agriculture and the sugar industry—the basis of Antigua’s economy—and at the age of twenty-two, he became the first person of color to work as a manager within the Antiguan Sugar Syndicate, where he helped modernize harvesting and production methods and also sought to improve the status and labor conditions of the workers. He spent much of the 1950s traveling and learning advanced agricultural and industrial techniques in England, Scotland, and West Germany. During this time, he experienced the depths of racism and bias against people of color, and he often resorted to working as a day laborer to get by. While in Europe, Walter pursued a variety of creative and artistic outlets, including drawing and painting as well as writing prose, philosophical texts, and poetry. The artist returned to the Caribbean in 1961, where, in addition to painting, drawing, and writing, he began making sculptures, photographs, and sound recordings. In the early 1990s, Walter designed and built his home and studio on Bailey Hill in Antigua, where he spent the remainder of his time in relative isolation, reflecting, writing, and making art inspired by his thoughts, knowledge, journeys, and surroundings.

In addition to his retrospectives at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, in 2020 and the Pavilion of Antigua and Barbuda at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, Walter has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Harewood House, Leeds, UK, in 2017 and The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, in 2013. In 2019, his art was featured at the 58th Venice Biennale as part of the group exhibition Find Yourself: Carnival and Resistance, exploring Carnival in the culture of Antigua and Barbuda, curated by Barbara Paca and Nina Khrushcheva, and his work was included in the group exhibition Get Lifted!, curated by Hilton Als for Karma Gallery, New York, in 2021. Hilton Als, exhibition text for By Land, Air, Home, and Sea: The World of Frank Walter, David Zwirner, New York, 2022.

The Frank Walter Catalogue Raisonné project is currently being undertaken by the Walter family and Barbara Paca. Hilton Als became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1994, a theater critic in 2002, and chief theater critic in 2013. He began contributing to the magazine in 1989, writing pieces for The Talk of the Town. Als was previously a staff writer for The Village Voice and an editor at large at Vibe. He has also written articles for The Nation, The Believer, The New York Review of Books, and 4Columns, among other publications. His first book, The Women, a meditation on gender, race, and personal identity was published in 1996 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. His 2013 book, White Girls (McSweeney’s), was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.

GET LIFTED! KARMA GALLERY, NEW YORK, NY, USA

19 August - 2 October 2021

Get Lifted! is an examination and celebration of how, in dark times and just after, the artist’s creative process can reaffirm life in its effort to describe it. In this group exhibition featuring artists ranging from Diane Arbus and Peter Hujar to Louise Fishman and Reggie Burrows Hodges, the viewer is treated to works in a variety of media—painting, film, photography—that, essentially, describe faith: in the transgressive body, in political freedom, in ecclesiastical belief, in sexual forthrightness and desire, in the release from the corporeal to the spiritual and, thus, the ecstatic.

FRANK WALTER: MUSIC OF THE SPHERES, INGLEBY GALLERY, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

29 July - 25 September 2021

We, at David Zwirner, remain thrilled to have presented an exhibition of work by Antiguan artist, writer, and polymath Frank Walter in London in 2021 - the first solo presentation of Walter’s work in the city. The survey presentation showcased the immense depth of Walter’s intellect and creativity and his prolific artistic output and enthralled the audience in the city. Thank you to Barbara Paca and the Walter family for their co-operation, insights, support and commitment to furthering the legacy of Frank Walter.

James Green, Director, David Zwirner

La Biennale di Venezia 2017: Viva Arte Viva

COLLABORATORS:

Commissioners: The Honourable E.P. Greene, Minister of Culture, Antigua and Barbuda

Melville Richardson, Education Officer, Visual Arts, Ministry of Education, Antigua and Barbuda

Curator: Barbara Paca, O.B.E., Ph.D., Cultural Envoy to Antigua and Barbuda

Nina Khrushcheva, Ph.D., Author and Exhibition Collaborator

Marco Pianegonda and Luigi di Marzi, Consulting Curators

Sascha Mercer, PR and Marketing Director

Kelly Nosari, Contributing Editor 

Mary Shanahan, Graphic Designer

Gooseberry Services, LLC, Logistics

Preservation Green, LLC, Gallery Space and Garden Design

Patrons: Their Excellencies, Sir Rodney Williams and Sandra, Lady Williams

Commissioners: The Honourable E.P. Greene, Minister of Culture, Antigua and Barbuda

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2023 FRANK WALTER, FORTES D’ALOIA & GABRIEL, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL

2022 BY LAND, AIR, HOME, AND SEA: THE WORLD OF FRANK WALTER, CURATED BY HILTON ALS, DAVID ZWIRNER GALLERY, NY

2021 FRANK WALTER CARTOGRAPHY, LANDSCAPE, AND HERALDRY, DAVID ZWIRNER LONDON

2020 RETROSPECTIVE, MUSEUM FÜR MODERNE KUNST, FRANKFURT-AM-MAIN, GERMANY

2019 BLUE FLOWERS, ROBERT HEALD GALLERY, WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND

2018 KABINET, INGLEBY GALLERY, ART BASEL HONG KONG, HK

2018 FRANK WALTER, SOLO PRESENTATION AT THE ADAA ART SHOW,

HIRSCHL & ADLER MODERN, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2017 AND PER SE AND PART XVII, WITH ALEXANDER CALDER,

INGLEBY GALLERY, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

2017 AND PER SE AND PART XVI, WITH ROSE WYLIE, INGLEBY GALLERY, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

2017 THE LAST UNIVERSAL MAN, VENICE BIENNALE, ANTIGUA AND

BARBUDA INAUGURAL NATIONAL PAVILION, VENICE, ITALY

2017 FLAMBOYANT TREES, HAREWOOD HOUSE, LEEDS, UK

2017 OUTSIDER ARTS FAIR, HIRSCHL & ADLER MODERN, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2016 LONELY BIRD, HIRSCHL & ADLER MODERN, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2015 FRANK WALTER, INGLEBY GALLERY, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

2013 FRANK WALTER, DOUGLAS HYDE GALLERY, TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, IRELAND
 

2013 FRANK WALTER, ART BASEL, INGLEBY GALLERY, MIAMI BEACH, MIAMI, FL, USA

2013 FRANK WALTER, THE ARMORY SHOW, INGLEBY GALLERY, NEW YORK, NY, USA

Selected Group Exhibitions

2023 DEATH OF AN OUTSIDER, SHRINE AT 538 N WESTERN, LOS ANGELES, CA, USA

2023 RIVER STYX, SEAVIEW, CURATED BY BRANDY CARSTEN & SARA HANTMAN, LOS ANGELES, CA, USA

2023 ILSE D’HOLLANDER, SOFIE VAN DE VELDE, CURATED BY WELLS FRAY-SMITH, ANTWERP, BELGIUM

2023 LOOKING BACK / WHITE COLUMNS ANNUAL, CURATED BY OLIVIA SHAO, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2021 GET LIFTED! KARMA GALLERY, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2019 FIND YOURSELF: CARNIVAL AND RESISTANCE, VENICE BIENNALE,

ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA NATIONAL PAVILION, VENICE ITALY

2019 DAMN! THE DEFIANT, FREDERICKS & FREISER GALLERY, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2019 HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: OBJECTS COMMON AND CURIOUS, FREEDMAN ART, NEW YORK, USA 

2018 JACOB’S LADDER, INGLEBY GALLERY, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

2018 VIS-À-VIS, HIRSCHL & ADLER MODERN, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2017 NEW YORK ARMORY SHOW, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2017 PARALLEL UNKNOWN: HAWKINS BOLDEN, EDWARD DEEDS,

PROPHET ROYAL ROBERTSON, MARY T. SMITH, BILL TRAYLOR, VALTON TYLER,

FRANK WALTER, DAVID ZELDIS, HIRSCHL & ADLER MODERN, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2017 ONLY SMALL PAINTINGS, FORTNIGHT INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2016 COSMIC CONNECTIONS, DAVID TOTAH GALLERY, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2016 ART BASEL, HONG KONG, HK

2016 NEW YORK ARMORY SHOW, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2015 ART BASEL, HONG KONG, HK

2015 NEW YORK ARMORY SHOW, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2015 ART BASEL, MIAMI BEACH, MIAMI, FL, USA

2015 SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

2015 LAND & SEA, DANESE COREY GALLERY, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2014 NEW YORK ARMORY SHOW, NEW YORK, NY, USA

2014 ART BASEL, MIAMI BEACH, MIAMI, FL, USA

2013 ARTRIO, RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL

 2013 SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE: ALFRED WALLIS, FORREST BESS

AND FRANK WALTER, INGLEBY GALLERY, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND