David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Antiguan artist, writer, and polymath Frank Walter at the gallery’s Hong Kong location. Curated by art historian Barbara Paca, a close friend to the artist and devoted scholar of his work, Pastorale is the gallery’s third exhibition of Walter’s work and the first presentation of his work in Asia. The presentation coincides with the forthcoming exhibition Frank Walter: Artist, Gardener, Radical, opening in October at the Garden Museum, London.
The exhibition will feature paintings and works on paper that exemplify Walter’s rich body of work, which encompasses a variety of media, styles, and formats, including those made on such supports as Polaroid film cartridge boxes, mosquito coil boxes, and fragments of sketchpad covers. A group of Caribbean landscape paintings will feature alongside a selection of small-scale paintings depicting the meadows of Scotland—made from memory to commemorate the time he spent there in 1960—revealing the artist’s distinctive use of color and his personal vision of the places he lived, traveled, and imagined. Over his prolific six-decade career, Walter created paintings that range from the vividly colored landscapes—which evoke the Romantic spirit of William Blake and Caspar David Friedrich—to formally inventive and probing portraits and systematic, abstract compositions. As Paca writes in a curatorial statement for the exhibition, “Pastorale presents a new dimension of the vast oeuvre of universal artist Frank Walter. As a recluse, Walter was more at ease in a world where he dwelt as the solitary inhabitant, and he captured every nuance with immediacy and honesty.”1
Walter’s landscape paintings reveal the artist’s keen eye for color and texture, as even the smallest works radiantly convey a profound sense of light and calm. A descendant of enslaved persons and plantation owners, Walter was born and raised in Antigua and lived in England and elsewhere in Europe from 1954 until 1961. He traveled through much of Scotland and Germany during that time—mostly on foot. These long, taxing walks became a time and space of freedom for Walter during which he could let his mind wander and explore his personal artistic pursuits, resulting in a body of intimate and emotive landscapes that depict the colorful meadows of wildflowers and rolling hills of the Scottish countryside. In these and Walter’s Caribbean landscapes, skies glow in hues of lavender, pink, and red, often layered with flowers and foliage that the artist enlivens with sponge-like brushwork in equally vibrant color. Occasional scenes invoke the pastoral, featuring groups of grazing sheep or goats. Several landscapes are defined by trees or branches that flank each side of the image, their darkened trunks acting as a framing device that creates a portal through which we see Walter’s vision of the horizon beyond. “Through these paintings,” Paca writes, “Walter interprets his homeland, which for interesting personal reasons includes Great Britain and Europe as a sacred idyll, chronicling the harmony of his solitude there with a skilled and sensitive paintbrush.”2
Frank Walter (1926–2009) 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 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 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 The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, in 2013, and Harewood House, Leeds, UK, in 2017. 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. In late June 2024, a solo exhibition of Walter’s work will be presented at The Drawing Center, New York.
Walter’s work is in the permanent collections of Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Pinault Collection, Paris; and Rennie Museum, Vancouver.
The Frank Walter Catalogue Raisonné project is currently being undertaken by the Walter family and Barbara Paca.
1 Barbara Paca, “Frank Walter’s Pastorale,” 2023.
2Ibid.
Image: Frank Walter outside his photo studio, Antigua, 1990s. © The Family of Frank Walter and Barbara Paca
弗蘭克·沃爾特：「田園牧歌」：新聞稿
地址
香港 |中環皇后大道中80號，H Queen’s 5–6樓
展期
9月14日開幕
卓納畫廊欣然於香港空間呈現安提瓜藝術家、作家、博學家弗蘭克·沃爾特的作品個展。展覽「田園牧歌」由藝術史學家芭芭拉·帕卡（Barbara Paca）策劃，她是藝術家的摯友，也是一位致力於其作品研究的學者。這將是沃爾特的第三場畫廊展覽，也是他的作品在亞洲的首展。與之同期，藝術家的個展「弗蘭克·沃爾特：藝術家、園藝人、激進者」將在十月於倫敦的花園博物館開幕。
展覽將突出彰顯了沃爾特豐富創作的繪畫和紙本作品，它們涵蓋了各種媒介、風格及形式，包括以寶麗來膠片盒、蚊香盒、速寫簿封面的碎片作為背板支撐的作品。展覽將呈現一組加勒比海的風景畫，及一組精選的小尺幅繪畫，它們描繪了蘇格蘭草地——沃爾特依據自己的記憶所創作，以紀念他1960年在當地度過的時光——並展露出藝術家獨特的色彩運用，以及他對自己曾生活、遊歷、想象的諸多地點的看法。在他高產的、長達六十年的職業生涯中，沃爾特不止創作出色彩鮮活的風景畫——它們令人想起了威廉·布萊克（William Blake）和卡斯珀·戴維·弗里德里希（Caspar David Friedrich）的浪漫主義的精神——還有形式上富有創造性和探索性的肖像畫，以及系統性的抽象作品。正如帕卡在這次的策展陳述中所寫的那樣：「『田園牧歌』呈現了享譽世界
的藝術家弗蘭克·沃爾特開闊豐富的藝術創作中的全新維度。作為一位隱居者，沃爾特在無人之境裡感到更自在，而且他以直率和坦誠去捕捉每一處細微的差別。」1
沃爾特的風景繪畫展露出藝術家對色彩和紋理的敏銳洞察，即便是最小尺幅的作品，也煥發出了深邃的光亮和平靜之感。身為一位被奴役者和種植園主的後代，沃爾特出生並成長於安提瓜，並且在1954到1961年間生活於英格蘭和歐洲的其他地方。在此期間，他在蘇格蘭和德國的許多地方四處遊歷——大多情況是徒步旅行。這些漫長的、勞累的徒步旅行，成為了對沃爾特而言一片自由的時間與空間，他在其中可以放飛思緒，探索個人的藝術追求，並由此創作出大量令人倍感親密且充滿情感的風景畫作品，它們描繪了蘇格蘭鄉野滿是五彩繽紛野花的草地以及連綿起伏的山丘。在沃爾特這些加勒比風景的作品中，天空顯現出薰衣草色、粉色和紅色，花朵和樹葉層層疊疊，藝術家用海綿般的筆觸描繪出了與之同等鮮艷的色彩。偶爾出現的田園風景中有一群群的羊在吃草。數幅風景畫的邊界由樹木或枝杈勾勒而成，它們襯託在畫面的兩側，漆黑的樹幹像取景框那樣為我們創造了一個入口，讓我們由此看到了沃爾特視野中的地平線。「通過這些畫作」，帕卡寫道，「沃爾特將他的故鄉——因為獨特的個人經歷，其故鄉包括了英國和歐洲——詮釋為一首神聖的田園詩，用他熟練而敏感的畫筆記錄了自己在那裡體會到的獨自一人的和諧融洽。」2
弗蘭克·沃爾特（Frank Walter，1926–2009），原名弗朗西斯·阿奇博爾德·溫特沃思·沃爾特（Francis Archibald Wentworth Walter），1926年出生於安提瓜的霍斯福德山（Horsford Hill）。從年輕時開始，沃爾特的聰明才智就為家人所賞識，並很快贏得了社區的欽佩和尊重。沃爾特與自己的故土感受到深厚的聯結，22歲的他學習了農業及製糖產業——安提瓜的經濟支柱——並且成為了首位在安提瓜糖業集團中擔任經理的有色人種，在那裡，他幫助實現了收割和生產方法的現代化，並尋求改善工人的地位和勞動條件。1950年代的大部分時間，他都在英格蘭、蘇格蘭和西德遊歷並學習了先進的農業和工業技術。在此期間，他親歷了難以撼動的種族主義以及針對有色人種的種種偏見，而且為了生活，他常常去做日工勞力。在歐洲期間，沃爾特嘗試了各種創造性、藝術性的實踐，包括繪畫，以及散文、哲思性文字和詩歌的寫作。
1961年，藝術家返回加勒比，並且在繪畫和寫作之外開始了雕塑、攝影和錄音的作品創作。在1990年代早期，沃爾特在安提瓜的貝利山（Bailey Hill）上設計並建造了自己的住所兼工作室，他以較為隱世的方式在那裡度過了自己的餘生，進行思考、寫作、創作藝術，其靈感來自他的想法、知識、旅程以及周圍的環境。
2020年，法蘭克福現代藝術博物館為藝術家舉辦了回顧展，而在2017年的第57屆威尼斯雙年展，他的作品代表了安提瓜和巴布達國家館，除此之外，沃爾特的作品個展還曾於2013年在都柏林三一學院的道格拉斯海德美術館舉行，還於2017年在英國利茲的哈伍德宮舉行。2019年，他的作品作為群展「找到自己：狂歡節和反抗」的一部分，呈現於第58屆威尼斯雙年展，展覽由芭芭拉·帕卡和尼娜·赫魯曉娃（Nina Khrushcheva）策劃，探索了安提瓜和巴布達文化中獨有的狂歡節；2021年，他的作品還被囊括於由希爾頓·阿爾斯（Hilton Als）在紐約卡瑪畫廊策劃的群展「提升！」中。2024年的6月末，沃爾特的作品即將呈現於紐約繪畫中心為他舉辦的個展。
沃爾特的作品被珍藏於馬里蘭州波托馬克的格蘭斯通博物館、明尼阿波利斯美術館、法蘭克福現代藝術博物館、巴黎的皮諾收藏基金會，以及溫哥華雷尼博物館等機構的永久館藏之中。
日前，沃爾特的家人和芭芭拉·帕卡正在籌備《弗蘭克·沃爾特作品圖錄全集》項目。
1 芭芭拉·帕卡（Barbara Paca），《弗蘭克·沃爾特的「田園牧歌」》，2023年。
2 出處同上。
圖片：弗蘭克·沃爾特在他攝影工作室的室外，1990年代。© 弗蘭克·沃爾特家族及芭芭拉·帕卡