1. Early life

2. Agricultural career in Antigua

3. Life in Europe

4. Life in Dominica

5. Seclusion in Antigua

6. Artistic legacy

7. Selected exhibitions

8. Bibliography

9. References

Early life

Frank Walter was born in Antigua in 1926.^[3] He studied at the Antigua Grammar School where he excelled in Latin, science, and the arts.^[1]

Walter was raised by elderly family matriarchs and learned from a young age that his ancestors included both aristocratic European slave owners and enslaved people of African descent. During Walter's youth, Antigua was a society divided along racial lines, and the reality of mixed-race families created outside of marriage was largely considered private knowledge and often lost through the generations.

In his youth, Walter's education and professional trajectory defied the statistical challenges facing young men of color in 1930s Antigua, and the identity that he constructed was heavily influenced by his awareness of his aristocratic European forebears.^[4] Later in life, Walter became tormented by his descent from white slave owners, enslaved women, and illegitimate mixed-race children.^[4]

Agricultural career in Antigua

Walter was the first person of color to "break through the race barrier to work in the upper tier of Antigua’s agricultural industry". When he was promoted to the role of manager in 1948 at age twenty-two by Sir Alexander Moody-Stuart, Walter became the first to work as an equal among whites in the Antiguan Sugar Syndicate.^[2] Sugar was the source of socio-economic power at that point in Antigua's history, and Walter's capabilities earned him the respect of his peers.

Life in Europe

Walter was offered the chance to manage the entire Antiguan Sugar Syndicate in the early 1950s, but he turned down this opportunity to embark on an industrial Grand Tour of Great Britain and Europe. He was driven to help alleviate the poverty of his fellow black countrymen and wanted to introduce the latest technological advancements in mining and agriculture to Antigua.

Walter spent eight years traveling Europe and struggling with a race-based caste system that relegated him to unskilled labor. He suffered greatly from the racism he encountered and the poverty that resulted from his low wages, but he continued to pursue his interests by studying in Europe's metropolitan libraries. During this time, he actively researched his family history and studied various aristocratic family trees. He became obsessed with his heritage and also invented connections to the regents of Britain and Europe—crowning himself as the 7th Prince of the West Indies, Lord of Follies and the Ding-a-Ding Nook.^[3]

The complexities of Walter's mixed-race identity and his frustrations with postcolonial society became increasingly apparent during his eight years in Europe.

Life in Dominica

When Walter arrived in Antigua in 1961, the sugar industry was on the brink of collapse. He relocated to the nearby island of Dominica, and applied for and received a land grant from the government. He named his twenty-five-acre agricultural estate Mount Olympus and spent five years clearing the land by hand to create a sustainable and productive acreage. He selectively removed the canopy of bois diable trees to allow sunlight and air for fruit trees and vegetables. Using kilns, he repurposed these cleared materials as charcoal to make a viable local energy source he shared with his neighbors.

During this time, Walter began to sculpt figures using wood harvested from his estate in a style that was likely inspired by the traditions of the Caribbean Arawak and African Dogon peoples.

Once Mount Olympus was prepared for planting, the government confiscated it from Walter. He was bereft at his loss and returned to Antigua.

Seclusion in Antigua

In the late 1960s, Walter ran and was defeated in Antigua's race for prime minister. He chose to retire from public life and dedicate himself to his art practice.

Walter built a simple house and art studio on Bailey's Hill above Falmouth Harbour where he lived in isolation without running water or electricity.^[2] His home was filled with paintings and sculpture he made in secrecy and carefully stacked and arranged in his house. He was also surrounded by stacks of books on philosophy, law, history, botany, and heraldry. Walter's creative process relied on a multidisciplinary approach and a collection of curio to generate what Walter Benjamin identified in his 1931 essay “Unpacking My Library” as a “dialectical tension between the poles of order and disorder.”

Walter's sculptures served a talismanic purpose in his life, and he depicted figures as varied as ancient Arawak people, European royalty, and men from outer space. He revisited his memories in remarkable detail in painting and writing and explored nature as an avid environmentalist and student of science. Many portraits and landscapes drew upon his memories of travel in Scotland and Europe, and he classified his broad range of paintings as galactic, scientific, heraldic, and abstract.^[5]

Artistic legacy

Walter was a prolific artist. He produced:

• 5,000 paintings
• 1,000 photographs
• 600 hand-carved wooden sculptures
• 2,000 carved wooden picture frames
• 500 handmade wooden toys
• 25,000+ typewritten pages on history, philosophy, poetry, plays, political science, genealogy, and art^[5]
• 25,000 hand-written pages on history, philosophy, poetry, plays, political science, genealogy, and art^[5]
• 440+ hours of tapes in Walter's words

In Frank Walter: The Last Universal Man (Radius Books, 2017), author and curator Barbara Paca posits that the sheer diversity and depth of Walter's work as visual artist, musician, and philosopher means he attained the humanist ideal of man exemplified in Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (c.1490).

Walter's struggle with his mental health gave him a unique perspective and can be seen as an inextricable part of his creativity and invention. For this reason, comparisons have been made between Frank Walter and mathematician John Nash, who was featured in the 1998 novel A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar and the 2001 film of the same name directed by Ron Howard^[6]

Walter's practice has been linked to a diverse group of artists, including Adolf Wölfli (1864–1930), Alfred Wallis (1855–1942), Forrest Bess (1911–1977), and Henry Darger (1892–1973). These artists—whose art is often categorized as “outsider art”—lived a reclusive lifestyle beyond the mainstream and explored unconventional, fantastic, and deeply personal ideas.

There are few Caribbean parallels to Walter. Guyanese painter Aubrey Williams (1926–1990) is perhaps the closest biographically. They were both highly educated and enjoyed early careers as successful tropical plantation managers. They had a British colonial heritage and traveled in the early 1950s to England, where they encountered overt racism. For example, Pablo Picasso reduced Williams to his physical appearance when they met. The famous artist told him that he had a “fine head,” and that he would like to paint him one day.^[7] According to New York Times critic Jason Farago, Walter's paintings of Antiguan flora—the insignia of European nobility—and his small abstractions of stars and circles recall the Pop Art of Robert Indiana^[8]

Selected exhibitions

One of Walter's most internationally recognized exhibition to date has been Antigua & Barbuda's inaugural National Pavilion as part of La Biennale di Venezia 2017.^[9] The exhibition—a retrospective of Walter's work—has been reviewed positively by The New York Times and Al Jazeera.^[7][10] The pavilion was also intended as a posthumous fulfillment of Walter's expressed desire to open his house and studio as a center for art and dialogue. In keeping with this theme of inclusivity, no entrance fee was charged and the exhibition was designed to be fully accessible for people with disabilities.

• 2017 Antigua and Barbuda National Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
• 2017 Outsider Arts Fair, Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY, USA
• 2016 Lonely Bird, Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY, USA
• 2015 Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
• 2013 Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
• 2013 Art Basel, Miami Beach, Miami, Florida, USA

Bibliography

Barbara Paca (Contributions from His Excellency, Sir Rodney Williams, Governor General of Antigua and Barbuda; Nina Khrushcheva; The Rt. Honourable Patricia Scotland, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth; Sir Mark Moody-Stuart; Caitlin Hoffman; Marcus Nakbar Crump; Sir Selvyn Walter; and Kenneth M. Milton), Frank Walter: The Last Universal Man 1926-2009, Radius Books, 2017.

Barbara Paca, Frank Walter, Art Basel, Miami Beach, Ingleby Gallery, 2013.

References

• Kupa e shqipërisë 2008-09
• Kupa e shqipërisë 2008–09
• Kupalawskaya (Minsk Metro)
• Kupalle
• Kupang Airport
• Kupang, Kedah
• Kupang Regency
• Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta
• Kupari, Croatia
• Kupa River
• Kupa (river)
• Kupa River (Croatia)
• Kuparovice
• Kuparuk
• Kuparuk oil field
• Kuparuk River Oil Field
• Kuparuk river oil field
• Kuparuk River Unit
• Kupasi
• Kupası
• Kupat
• Kupat Holim
• Kupat Holim Clalit
• Kupat Holim Maccabi
• Kupat Holim Meuhedet