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Ad Code: 4
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An example of work by Walter Keane
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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Biography from AskART:
| Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Walter Keane became a highly-popular post World War II figure painter of wide-eyed "lost" children, waif-like and sympathy provoking. These images were reproduced throughout the world with originals in many collections including the United Nations, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, Spain, and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, Japan.
At the age of fifteen, he moved to Los Angeles to live with an uncle, and as a young adult, seemed headed towards a business career, following in the footsteps of his father. However, he began painting on his own, and in 1938, abandoned the business idea to attend college in Berkeley from where he graduated three years later.
He became so torn emotionally between the pressure of his father to be practical and go into business and his own inner drive to be an artist that he developed ulcers. But late in 1943, he made the final decision to become an artist and painted full time for a year in Berkeley and then enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris where he lived a raucous Bohemian-style life.
In Paris, he painted street scenes and figures including nudes, and from 1946 to 1947, he went to Berlin where he began his signature theme of "Lost Children." These paintings were inspired by his shock at seeing the thousands of war-orphaned, poverty-stricken children. Wanting to capture the realism of these people, he abandoned the Abstract Expressionism he had flirted with and focused on a style that more closely resembled Realism with elements of Modernism.
He stayed in Europe until 1949 and then returned to Berkeley where he worked from his Berlin drawings and did a lot of painting in Sausalito, living at North Beach. He married his wife, Margaret, also an artist, and they lived in Oakland, and became public personalities because his work was collected by so many movie stars.
By 1956, he and Margaret opened a gallery at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu, and again his work got much attention. Shortly after, the couple returned to San Francisco where they had a gallery at 494 Broadway for two years and then opened a gallery in New York City. Again he had many collectors but also received criticism for being repetitious with every canvas having a "lost" child.
In 1965, Walter and Margaret Keane divorced, and a judge ruled against him when he made claims that certain paintings of waif-like children signed Keane were by him. When the judge asked Margaret and Walter to each produce a painting in that style and subject matter, he declined and she readily performed. The conclusion, according to "Artnews" November, 2000 is that some of the paintings attributed to him are in fact by his former wife.
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The following is from the obituary of the artist, source unknown:
Artist Walter Keane dies at 85
The original and distinct style, developed by artist Walter Keane, of small children with huge dark eyes, dominated the art world of the sixties. Keane was inspired by his humanity when immediately after World War II he was in Berlin and was so deeply moved by the lost waifs he saw throughout the city. That began his portrayal of the sad-eyed waifs who touched the hearts of collectors throughout the world. Keane has paintings in various museums. Among them is one in the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid called "Out After Dark". Another of his stirring paintings called "Berlin Wall" has a length of barbed wire incorporated into the canvas.
Walter Keane had been painting for many years before he met and married his second wife, Margaret Doris Hawkins, who worked with him as his apprentice and later adopted his style. Walter's innate talent and charisma further blossomed in the unique and distinguished artistic careers of both his daughter Susan Hale Keane and granddaughter Stephanie Keane Patterson.
While Walter's paintings are signed only "KEANE", former wife Margaret's are signed "MDH Keane". Walter Keane's daughter Susan's paintings are signed "S.H. KEANE".
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