John Walker (painter)

John Walker (born 1939) in Birmingham, England is a painter and printmaker. He has been called "one of the standout abstract painters of the last 50 years."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He currently lives in Maine.

Education and early work

Walker studied in Birmingham at the Moseley School of Art, and later the Birmingham School of Art and Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.<ref name="article">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Some of his early work was inspired by abstract expressionism and post-painterly abstraction, and often combined apparently three-dimensional shapes with "flatter" elements. These pieces are usually rendered in acrylic paint.

Career

In the early 1970s, Walker made a series of large Blackboard Pieces using chalk first exhibited at the opening of Ikon Gallery, in Birmingham Shopping Centre, Birmingham in 1972 and the Juggernaut works which also use dry pigment. From the late 1970s, his work marked allusions to earlier painters, such as Francisco Goya, Édouard Manet and Henri Matisse, either through the quoting of a pictorial motif, or the use of a particular technique Template:Citation needed. Also during this time, he began to use oil paint more in his work Template:Citation needed. His paintings of the 1970s are also notable for what has come to be termed canvas collage – the application of glued-on, separately painted patches of canvas to the main canvas (see the external link below for an example and image) Template:Citation needed.

After spending some time in Australia, Walker got a position at the Victoria College of the Arts in Melbourne.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He produced the Oceania series around this time which incorporates elements of native Oceanic art.

Walker taught painting and was the head of the graduate painting program at Boston University from 1992 -2015.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Walker won the 1976 John Moores Painting Prize<ref>John Moores Prize Template:Webarchive</ref> and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1985.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Exhibitions and collections

In September 2010, Walker and five other British artists including Howard Hodgkin, John Hoyland, Ian Stephenson, Patrick Caulfield and R.B. Kitaj were included in an exhibition entitled The Independent Eye: Contemporary British Art From the Collection of Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie, at the Yale Center for British Art.<ref>Channeling American Abstraction, Karen Wilkin, Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 7 October 2010</ref><ref>NY Times, exhibition review. Retrieved 15 December 2010</ref>

Walker has a 2008 Landscape Painting on display at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. in the Modern Section Template:Citation needed. He also has work in the following public collections: Ackland Art Museum Template:Citation needed, The University of North Carolina at Chapel HillTemplate:Citation needed; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Australia Template:Citation needed; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois Template:Citation needed; Arts Council, EnglandTemplate:Citation needed; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, EnglandTemplate:Citation needed; The British Museum, London, England Template:Citation needed; City Art Gallery, Leeds Museums and Galleries, EnglandTemplate:Citation needed; The Cleveland Museum of Art, OhioTemplate:Citation needed; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, MaineTemplate:Citation needed; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MassachusettsTemplate:Citation needed; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New YorkTemplate:Citation needed; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.Template:Citation needed; Imperial War Museum, London, EnglandTemplate:Citation needed; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Template:Citation needed; Iziko Museum of Cape Town, South AfricaTemplate:Citation needed; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca Template:Citation needed, New York; The Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, NormanTemplate:Citation needed; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NebraskaTemplate:Citation needed; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkTemplate:Citation needed; Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, England; MIT-List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MassachusettsTemplate:Citation needed; Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, GermanyTemplate:Citation needed; Museum Neuhaus—Sammlung Liaunig, AustriaTemplate:Citation needed; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IllinoisTemplate:Citation needed; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los AngelesTemplate:Citation needed; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MassachusettsTemplate:Citation needed; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Brooklyn College Library, New York, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.Template:Citation needed; National Gallery of Australia, CanberraTemplate:Citation needed; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New YorkTemplate:Citation needed; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.Template:Citation needed; Portland Museum of Art, Maine Template:Citation needed; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Gallery, Edinburgh Template:Citation needed; Southampton City Art Gallery, England Template:Citation needed; Tate Gallery, London, England Template:Citation needed; Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland Template:Citation needed; The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor Template:Citation needed; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England Template:Citation needed; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, RichmondTemplate:Citation needed; The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, EnglandTemplate:Citation needed; Whitney Museum of American Art, New YorkTemplate:Citation needed; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut Template:Citation needed.

In 2010, Walker had a solo exhibition at Tsinghua University in Beijing.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

John Walker monograph written by Catherine Lampert and Alex Bacon has been published by Thames & Hudson 2025.

See also

• Boston Expressionism

External links

• Template:Art UK bio
• John Walker in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler Collection
• John Walker's Untitled, (1976) (acrylic, chalk, and canvas collage on canvas, 120 x 96 in.; Phillips Collection, Washington, DC)
• Exhibition at Tim Olsen Gallery in Sydney Australia (2012)
• Template:Cite web