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 time-honored media such as paint, ink, crayon and pencil. His artworks add together collages, cartoons,
pencil drawings, linoleum-cuts, woodcuts, sculptures, paintings, and portraits. He was one of the first and unaided black social authenticity 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 innovative art painters in 1952.

Sanford was part 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 helpfully 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 occurring a further studio across the street from the Prairie Shores and Lake Meadows apartments. He returned to social realism and entertained guests in his new studio even if he painted for them.