John Walker (b. 1939)

He was born in Birmingham, England in 1939. From 1956 to 1960 he studied at Birmingham College of Art, and was awarded the distinguished Arts Council of Great Britain Drawing Prize and the Edwin Abbey Traveling Scholarship, which allowed him to continue his studies at the British school in Rome (1960-61), following which he continued his studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris (1961-63).

From 1967 to 1969, John Walker was a Gregory Fellow at Leeds University. He was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to the United States (1969-70) and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981. He has been artist-in-residence at Oxford University (1977-78), and at Monash University, Melbourne (1980). Walker has been a dedicated and influential teacher throughout his career and since 1993 has been Professor of Graduate Painting at Boston University.

John Walker resides and works in Boston, Massachusetts and in Maine.

Selected Solo exhibitions:
Portland Museum of Art, Maine, and Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. (2005); Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport (2004, traveled); Wiegand Art Gallery, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, California (2002); DAAP Galleries at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio (2002); Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport (2002); Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine (2001); Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut (1999); Boston University Art Gallery, Massachusetts (1997, traveled); Nielsen Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts (1993/2008); The Arts Club of Chicago, Illinois (1991-92); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (1987); The Tate Gallery, London, England (1985); The Arts Council of Great Britain (1985, traveled); Knoedler & Company, New York (1983/2009); The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (1978, 1982, 2002); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1978); 36th Venice Biennale (1972); The Hayward Gallery, London, England (1964).

Selected Group Exhibition:
Against the Grain: Contemporary Art from the Edward R. Broida Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006); Founders and Heirs of the New York School, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan and The Yomiuri Shimbun Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1997, traveled); After Matisse, Independent Curators Incorporated, New York (1986-88, traveled); The Window in Twentieth-Century Art. Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York (1986-87, traveled); The British Art Show 2; Old Allegiances and New Directions 79-84, Arts Council, England (1984-85); The Critical Eye, The Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut (1984); Painting Endures, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts (1975); John Moore's Liverpool Exhibition. Walker Art Center, Liverpool, England (1974, 1976); British Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (1970); Theodoran Foundation Exhibition. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1969).

Selected Public Collections:
Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Australia; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Arts Council, England; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, England; The British Museum, London, England; City Art Gallery, Leeds Museums and Galleries, England; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Imperial War Museum, London, England; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Iziko Museum of Cape Town, South Africa; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; The Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, England; MIT-List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany; Museum Neuhaus—Sammlung Liaunig, Austria; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Gallery, Edinburgh; Southampton City Art Gallery, England; Tate Gallery, London, England; Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland; The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut.

Books:
Dore Ashton, John Walker Collage (2005) and John Walker: Paintings from the Alba and Oceania Series 1979-84 (1985); Bruce Brown, John Walker: A Winter in Maine, 2003-2004 (2004); William Corbett, John Walker: Drawings 1973-1975 (2009); Jack Flam, John Walker (1982) and John Walker: Time and Tides (2001); Katy Kline, John Walker: A Maine Tidal Cove (2001); Dushan Petrovich and John Walker, John Walker: Seal Point Series (2006); Eliza Rathbone, John Walker (2002); John R. Stomberg, A Theater of Recollection: Paintings and Prints by John Walker (1997).

Sources include:
Knoedler Gallery and other internet sources

John Walker was born in Birmingham, England in 1939. He attended the Birmingham College of Art in the 1950s. In the 1960s he studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris. He then moved to New York where he was influenced by the Abstract Expressionists.

Walker now splits his home between South Bristol, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts where he is on the art faculty of Boston University.

Source: Art & Antiques, October 2004