Unholy Sonnets by Walter Feldman

Artist Bio

WALTER FELDMAN Home Galleries Biography Contact Biography Walter Feldman was born in 1925 in Lynn Massachusetts. After high school he became a student at the Yale School of the Fine Arts in 1942. After one semester he joined the army and served for two years in the European theatre in the infantry. He was awarded 4 battle stars, the Purple Heart and the combat infantry badge. He reentered Yale in 1946, studied with Whilhem deKooning and Josef Albers . He received the BFA in 1950 and was awarded the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship and spent the next months traveling and studying in France and Italy. He returned to Yale and received the MFA in 1951 and stayed on as Instructor of Painting for the next two years. In 1952 he received the print prize at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for his wood cut " The Final Agony" . In 1953 he was appointed to the art faculty at Brown University. His work in printmaking received awards in a number of national exhibitions in 1953 '54 and '55. In 1957 he was awarded a senior Fulbright Fellowship and worked in painting and mosaic in Rome. In that same year he was awarded the gold medal in Milan's "Mostra International for his self portrait. In the same year he received two major commissions: a multi color woodcut for the International Graphic Arts Society and for a series of exterior mosaic pavements for the new Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island In 1959 he received the Childe Hassam purchase prize from the National Academy of Design and the Tonner prize from the American Color Print Society. In 1960 he designed and executed a large exterior mosaic mural for Temple Emanu-el in Providence and was followed in 1961 with a series of seven stained glass windows in a Memorial Chapel in Providence. He was awarded the George A. and Eliza Gardener Howard Fellowship and spent 1962 painting in Mexico where he absorbed a great deal of the pre Columbian imagery and culture. In1966 he painted a 32 panel mural for the new meeting hall of Temple Emanu-el in Providence. He was commissioned by the Gorham Silver Company to design a commemorative silver plate in 1973. In 1976 he painted a 4,500 square foot exterior mural for the Union paper company. His paintings during the period before and after the turn of the century were shown in numerous one man and group exhibitions in New York, Mexico City , London, Milan, and Boston. Since 1985 he has divided his time in painting and as the designer and publisher of artists' book under the Ziggurat press imprint. His artists' books are in over a 150 public collections including the museum of Modern Art and the Albert and Victoria Museum. Retiring in 2007 he is now Visual Art Professor Emeritus of Brown University and continues painting and producing artists' books .