Who is Walter Sanford?

Walter Sanford, also known as Sanford, (30 January 1912 – 3 July 1987), was an American artist who worked in a range of styles and influences using standard media such as paint, ink, crayon and pencil. His artworks swell collages, cartoons, pencil drawings, linoleum-cuts, woodcuts, sculptures, paintings, and portraits. He was one of the first and abandoned black social realism and abstract expressionist artists of the 20th century. He was heralded “Black Picasso” and “Detroit’s Picasso” for his cubist figure paintings and in 1958 he won the Prix de Paris La Grande Saison de Paris at the Raymond Duncan Galleries. In Detroit, he opened the first black-owned art gallery and exhibited at the first Negro Art Exhibition and Negro History Week and was hailed as one of Michigan’s foremost protester art painters in 1952.

Sanford was allocation of the Second Wave (1941-1960) of the Chicago Black Renaissance of African-American artists and embraced a wide range of styles and influences. An expressionist until 1945, Sanford was straightforwardly influenced by and followed Pablo Picasso’s cubism in his paintings, then switched to abstract expressionism for 18 years. During this period, he traveled and worked in Mexico, France, and Las Vegas, but always returned to his home in Chicago. In 1962, he moved Sanford Studio (171 W. Oak Street, Chicago) to the South Side and set in the works a supplementary studio across the street from the Prairie Shores and Lake Meadows apartments. He returned to social veracity and entertained guests in his supplementary studio even though he painted for them.