Frank Walter

In Frank Walter: The Last Universal Man (Radius Books 2017), the Walter family and Barbara Paca worked with a group of distinguished experts with backgrounds in Antiguan politics, philanthropy, international affairs, and neurosurgery to establish the context and interdisciplinary nature of Walter's work. Nina Khrushcheva is responsible for the title, positing that the sheer diversity and depth of Walter's work as visual artist, musician, and philosopher allowed him to attain the humanist ideal of man exemplified in Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (c. 1490).

One of Walter's most internationally recognized exhibition to date has been Antigua and Barbuda's inaugural National Pavilion as part of La Biennale di Venezia 2017.

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.

In 1993, Walter designed and built a house and art studio in the picturesque countryside above Falmouth Harbour where he lived until his death in 2009 in peaceful isolation. He sited the structures to enjoy spectacular views of Sugarloaf Mountain, Monk's Hill, Falmouth Harbour, and the sea, and dwelt in close proximity to nature. Without running water or electricity, Walter grew much of his own food, and lived near his relations who were organic farmers. His home was filled with paintings and sculpture that he made in secrecy and carefully 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."

Once Mount Olympus was prepared for planting in 1968, the government confiscated it from Walter. He was bereft at his loss and returned to Antigua.

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 25-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.

In the late 1960s, Walter became involved in politics and wrote manifestos for the Antigua and Barbuda National Democratic Party. In 1971 he ran and was defeated by his relation, Sir George Walter in Antigua's race for prime minister. He chose to retire from public life and dedicate himself to his art practice in small studios in central St. John's. He worked as a photographer and a painter during this period, selling mostly small Polaroid photographs and tiny paintings of letters of the alphabet and landscape to tourists. No one knew of his larger-scale abstract and figurative paintings, which were done in secret, and stored for a large-scale exhibition that he planned but was never realized.

Walter was offered the opportunity to manage the entire Antiguan Sugar Syndicate in 1953, but he turned down this job to embark on what was intended to be a ten-year industrial Grand Tour of Great Britain and Europe. He was motivated by a desire to engage new technologies to alleviate the poverty of his fellow black countrymen, and wanted to introduce the latest European and British innovation in mining and agriculture to Antigua.

From 1953 to 1961, Walter spent eight years traveling in Europe and the UK struggling with a race-based caste system that relegated him to the menial role of unskilled laborer. During an interview for his first job in London, he proudly stated his role as manager. The employer rebuffed, "We don't have tropical sugar plantations in England", and offered him a job to clean the floors. Walter suffered from poverty resulting from subsistence wages, but continued to pursue his academic interests by studying in Europe's metropolitan libraries. During this period, Walter actively researched his family history and studied various aristocratic family trees. He became obsessed with his heritage, inventing 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. It is interesting to note that Follies and Ding-a-Ding Nook are the names of plantations owned by his white Antiguan ancestors.

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 mentor and Director Sir Alexander Moody-Stuart, Walter became the first to work as an equal among whites in the Antiguan Sugar Syndicate. 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.

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. Later in life, Walter became tormented by his descent from white slave owners, enslaved women, and illegitimate mixed-race children.

Frank Walter (September 11, 1926 – February 11, 2009), born Francis Archibald Wentworth Walter, was an Antiguan artist, sculptor, photographer, composer, writer, and philosopher. Always shy and reserved, he became a recluse in later life so that he could devote himself to the pursuit of art. Walter has achieved posthumous recognition as one of the Caribbean's most significant artists.

Frank Walter was born in Antigua on September 11, 1926. He studied at the Antigua Grammar School where he excelled in Latin, science, and the arts. Impressed by his abilities, Walter's tutors encouraged him to pursue a degree in medicine or law. Walter opted for agriculture.

There are few Caribbean parallels to Walter. Guyanese painter Aubrey Williams (1926–1990) shares much in terms of biography. They were both highly educated and enjoyed early careers as successful tropical plantation managers. They were the product of a British colonial heritage, and travelled 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. According to The 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.

"It is impossible not to read Frank Walter’s biography into his art. Born in 1926 in Antigua – a West Indian island whose people were repressed and murdered under British colonial rule from the 1600s, only gaining full independence in 1981 – Walter was a descendent of both plantation owners and slaves."

Walter's art practice has been linked to a diverse group of artists, including Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), Adolf Wölfli (1864–1930), Alfred Wallis (1855–1942), Forrest Bess (1911–1977), and Henry Darger (1892–1973). These artists lived beyond the mainstream, and explored unconventional, fantastic, and deeply personal ideas.