Walter Battiss
This artwork was loaned to the exhibition Dada South? Experimentation, Radicalism and Resistance curated by Kathryn Smith and Roger van Wyk, Iziko South Africa National Gallery, December 12, 2009–February 28, 2010. It is indexed here as part of Smith and Van Wyk’s revisiting of the Dada South? Archive of materials at A4 Arts Foundation.
b.1906, KwaNojoli; d.1982, Port Shepstone
Walter Battiss remains an enduringly enigmatic figure in South African art history. He is notable for his inconstant and various mediums – including, among others, watercolour, oils, silkscreen, ceramics, and sculpture – and for the collision of influences in his work. In pursuing a new African modernism, Battiss experimented with such seemingly incongruent styles as Post-Impressionism and Pop Art, paired with formal elements borrowed from San rock paintings, Arabic calligraphy and Ndebele beadwork. While the artist described himself as the “first neo-primitive in South Africa”, others variously classed him a “gentle anarchist,” “amateur anthropologist,” “paunchy painter-poet,” and “wandering nude.” Battiss is remembered today as King Fern of Fook Island, a utopian, sub-tropical destination of his own imagining.
