Walter BATTISS (1906 – 1982)
Banana Boy
Year unknown
Medium unknown
45 x 63 cm
Rogue
2006
Digital print
1/5
size not yet recorded
By Die See
Year unknown
Oil on canvas
30 x 41 cm
Child playing with the leg of a broken statue
1974
Silkscreen
43. x 58.5 cm
artist proof
Creation Of Man And Woman
Year unknown
Medium unknown
42 x 58 cm
Friends
Not dated
Screen print
45 x 38cm
Edition: 25/45
Girls On Horseback
1978
water colour
34 x 48cm
Man and Dog
1964
Linocut on paper
24 x 31 cm
Artist proof
Mediterranean Impressions
Year unknown
Oil on canvas
30 x 41cm
Orgy II
Year unknown
Medium unknown
43.5 x 60cm
Orgy V
Year unknown
Medium unknown
43.5 x 60cm
The Invention Of Walking Feathers
Year unknown
Screen print
45 x 64cm
Three masked African dancers
1940
Silkscreen
38 x 53.5 cm
Untitled
1980
pencil on paper
38.3 x 43 cm
Untitled
1980
pen and ink
38 x 56 cm
Untitled (Abstract No.2)
1948
Colour woodcut
43 x 58.5 cm
Untitled (calligraphic)
Year unknown
brush and ink drawing
29.2 x 43.2 cm
Untitled (cross, seed, dotted line, pattern)
1948
Colour woodcut
42.2 x 53.4 cm
Untitled (foot and bird)
Not dated
Screen print
50 x 40cm
Edition: 6/8
Untitled (Raaswater Limpopo)
1952
brush and ink drawing
34.8 x 43.7 cm
Untitled (The strasse der Grosse Freiheit, Hamburg)
1969
Silkscreen with watercolour
49.5 x 77 cm
artist proof
Untitled (Tu m’as fo)
1969
Silkscreen with watercolour
54.6 x 77.3 cm
Untitled (three heads, animal)
1965
Silkscreen
77 x 54.5 cm
Edition: 7/40
White Fig
oil on canvas
BIOGRAPHY
Walter Whall Battiss was born in Somerset East, a Karoo town in the Eastern Cape.
After receiving his teaching diploma in 1933, he started working at the Park School in Turffontein, Johannesburg. In 1936, he was appointed art master at Pretoria Boys School, where he would work for most of the next 30 years.
Battiss became a founding member of the New Group; and the only member who had not studied in Europe. In 1938, he visited Europe for the first time and met Abbé Henri Breuil. He married Grace Anderson, a renowned art-educationalist, in 1940. It was at this stage that Battiss’s painting began to take on a hieratic, symbolist character.
While exhibiting a collection of South African art with the International Art Club in Italy in 1949, Battiss had his first meeting with Pablo Picasso and the Futurist Gino Severini. Both made strong impressions on him and the influence of their work can be seen in his art.
In 1955, calligraphic forms made an appearance in Battiss’s work, as well as animal and human abstractions. The influence of Ndebele beadwork in his art also became clear at this time, and he began to experiment with coloured woodcuts.
In 1962, Battiss began exhibiting numerous canvases using palette-knife colour mixing with graffito delineation of forms. Around this time, he took several trips to places from Central Africa to the Middle East.
Between 1966 and 1968, Battiss made several trips to Greece; and so began the influence of islands on his creative thinking. It was during this time that he published a hand-printed book of texts and serigraphs titled ‘Nesos’. By 1969, he was working on serigraphy with Chris Betambeau in London and, in 1970, he organised the first South African exhibition of serigraphs.
When Battiss retired from his position as Professor of Fine Arts at UNISA in 1971, a special issue of De Arte was published in his honour. In 1980, Battiss designed four stamps for the Botswana postal service. The Walter Battiss Museum opened in Somerset East the following year, and remains open today.