Walt Walker, Gallery Owner, 84

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Walt Walker, a Los Angeles, California, artist who is credited with
opening and operating the first local gallery designed to show the work
of African American artists, died October 13, 2002, at the Daniel
Freeman Medical Center, in California, of unspecified causes, at the age
of 84.

A native of Drewry, Alabama, Walker moved with his family to Detroit
when he was a toddler. He was educated at the Detroit Institute of
Technology before moving to Los Angeles in the late 1940s.

He pursued his art -- oil painting -- while making his living as a
commercial artist working for companies such as Safeway foods and Norm's
restaurants. His subject matter ranged from paintings of African tribal
people to figures in urban settings.

In the 1950s, he was struck by the fact that there were no galleries in
town for black artists to show their work. Walker and his wife, Jane,
found a space at Crenshaw Boulevard and 48th Street and opened the LeJan
Gallery.

"Nobody had any confidence that I was doing the right thing," Walker
told a reporter for the Los Angeles Sentinel a few years ago. "I think
it shocked people to see black art."

A tribute exhibition of 50 Walker paintings from the last 30 years was
held at the William Grant Still Art Center in 2000.

A Times critic said Walker painted in a "straightforward, unshowy
manner." The most compelling image in the show, the reviewer said, was
"a small bust-length painting of a Masai woman adorned with great
clusters of beads around her neck and cascading from her hair."

LA Times