Biography
Walter Strack was born in 1936 to Swiss parents in France. He studied at the Kunstgewerbschule of Zurich (where Yaacov Agam also studied) under the supervision of Johannes Itten. In 1957, the Kiki gallery of Zurich gave him his first solo exhibition at the age of just 21. After his studies in Switzerland, he returned to France. In 1961, he was noticed by the American gallery Neufville where he exhibited his works alongside those of Ellsworth Kelly and Joan Mitchell. He represented Switzerland in 1966 at the Mostra Internationale d’Arte «Premio del Fiorino» in Florence. Since then, he has continued to exhibit in France and other European countries. His work was shown by L’Espace Meyer Zafra in the United States in 2013 during the Art Fair in Miami.
His early tachiste style is influenced by American painting. Later, attracted by Pop Art, he develops highly colorful female figures before finally entering the art movement of the late sixties. Walter Strack channels colors into large flat surfaces: rectangles and squares separated by a thin groove animate the mounted canvas. The adjacent panels are arranged to form relief: either jutting out or indented. His precise assembly methods suggest other angles of approach. The differences in relief and overlaps highlight the shades of color. Without being strictly mathematical, his tableau-reliefs achieve a balance. The cut-out shapes, with their depth and half-tones of color generate numerous contrasts and and great harmony.
Thus, as stated in 2008 by Gérard Xuriguera, critic and art historian: “whether viewed from above or below, the complementary surfaces carefully dissected according to a clear mental thought pattern, are arranged into a perfectly coherent whole. This emanates from the sure vision and thoughtful hand of the artist, who guarantees the exactitude of the divisions, the studied depth of the divided frames and the clarity of their surfaces before mounting the canvas and beginning work on the color.»
Works
