Walter Keane (Tomorrow's Masters Series)

Walter Stanley Keane (1915 - 2000) was an American artist working in San Francisco. He gained fame as a painter who, together with his 2nd wife Margaret Keane, produced a large number of kitsch paintings, characterized by large-eyed waifs. This is a collection of those paintings. Although he had studied art in Paris, Keane made a great deal of money initially by selling real estate in San Francisco. He began painting full time in 1948. Keane claimed that his inspiration for the big-eyed children came when he was in Europe as an art student. He is quoted as saying, "My psyche was scarred in my art student days in Europe, just after World War II, by an ineradicable memory of war-wracked innocents. In their eyes lurk all of mankind's questions and answers. If mankind would look deep into the soul of the very young, he wouldn't need a road map. I wanted other people to know about those eyes, too. I want my paintings to clobber you in the heart and make you yell, 'DO SOMETHING!" He met Margaret in 1953 and they married in 1955. In 1959, they were referred to as "the family that paints together sells together". In a New York exhibition, patrons bought 20 pieces of Walter's, 20 of Margaret's, and six painted by their daughters Susan and Jane. In 1961, The Prescolite Manufacturing Corporation bought Keane's painting Our Children and presented it to the United Nations Children's Fund. It is in the United Nations permanent collection of art. In 1965 Keane was named "one of the most controversial and most successful painters at work today", with his works owned by many celebrities and hanging in many permanent collections. The Keanes divorced in 1965 shortly after which a long-term legal battle began between them over whose idea the big-eyed children were. Walter lost a 1986 lawsuit to Margaret but continued to claim to his death that the premise was his. In 1991, he was quoted as saying, "I painted the waifs of the world." He died at age 85.