Anne Walker (artist)

Walker was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1933. Walker graduated in 1955 from Smith College. She spent her junior year in Paris, working at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse. In 1956 she returned to Paris to study with Johnny Friedlaender at his atelier; her first etchings were done there.[1]

Walker continued to make prints, create etchings, and a number of fine-press books in Paris. To date, she has made more than 330 prints, as well as a number of fine-press books illustrated with etchings.[3] Since the 1960s Walker has been participating in group, collective, and solo exhibitions in France and abroad. In Paris, she has been involved in the Salon de Mai, the Salon de la Jeune Gravure Contemporaine and the Salon d'Automne, of which she was a member for a time.[2]

In 1986 Walker took up painting, using gouache combined with pastel, a technique that has predominated in her work since then. With these materials she began exploring the format of the artist’s book, which has allowed her to collaborate with poets and writers whom she admires, including Michel Butor, Kenneth Koch and Peter Davison, to name a few. Much of her book work is concerned with the language of color and is characterized by a lyricism that pairs well with literature.[3]

Walker also illustrated single-copy, or very limited edition books, and worked on "painted books" over texts by writers such as Bernard Noël, Jean Cortot, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Baudelaire, Walt Whitman, Arthur Rimbaud and Eugène Guillevic.[2] Her solo exhibition Anne Walker: Painted Books at the Boston Athenaeum in 2003 featured handwritten poems by an impressive roster of writers: Emily Dickinson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and others, including the artist herself and one of her major collectors and collaborators, Edward Kessler.[4] A major exhibition in 2005 Poetics of Color: Books by Anne Walker featured thirty-two artist's books–likened to poetic jewel boxes–which she donated to the Mortimer Rare Book Collection at Smith College on the occasion of her 50th college reunion.[3] Walker’s work has continued to be recognized in both group and solo exhibitions in France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia and the United States and her painted books have been acquired by major libraries and museums in those countries.[5]

Walker and her husband, Bertrand Dorny who is also an artist, have two children, both professionally engaged in publishing.[6]

On December 11, 2001 Catherine Tasca, the French Minister of Culture, made Anne Walker-Dorny a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in recognition of her creation in the artistic domain and her contribution to culture in France and in the world.[1]

• Kessler, Edward (preface): Anne Walker, exhibition catalogue, Galerie La Pochade Paris 1974[5]
• Piza, Clélia (preface): Anne Walker, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Biren, Paris, 1979.[2]
• Plazy, Gilles (preface): Jardins, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Biren, Paris, 1987.[2]
• Le Roman de l'emotion, ou Le Travail d'Anne Walker by Bernard Noël, Angers: Présence de l'Art contemporain, 1996.[2]
• Herbert, Robert: Anne Walker: Painted Books, exhibition catalogue, The Boston Athenaeum, Boston, 2003.[2]
• Anne Walker: Gouaches et Pastels sur Papier, by Yves Peyré; Michel Butor, poèms, [Tesserte]: Pagine Arte, [2013].[5]

• Anne Walker artist book collection at the Mortimer Rare Book Collection, Smith College Special Collections
• Bertrand Dorny Collection at the Mortimer Rare Book Collection, Smith College Special Collections