WALTER VOIGT

(b. 1971 Johannesburg, South Africa)

Born in Johannesburg in 1971, Walter Voigt grew up in the mountainous Lowveld Escarpment region near Nelspruit in Mpumalanga, South Africa. He was educated at Uplands Primary School, St Alban’s College and Lowveld High School. In 1992 he began a three-year course in Graphic Design at The Witwatersrand Technikon in Johannesburg, majoring and specialisingin illustration.

Walter Voigt’s technical ability combined with a passion for the sky and landscape allow him to capture the elements of light, space, air and movement. There is a passionate love affair between earth and sky in Walter Voigt’s work. His paintings are atmospheric spaces designed for contemplation, “visual meditations” of sensual richness of colour, light and form. Voigt’s moody landscapes involve broad, energetic strokes, followed by lighter more sensitive touches. There is a vigorous, scratchy linear construction to his work, including other media such as palette knife, which Voigt says is easier to control than working with just a brush, giving variety and expression to the mark making process.

Voigt celebrates the African landscape as viewed through the European conventions of the sublime and expressionist. As he states, “The Turneresque views project a very emotive content upon the landscape. The quality of light and the juxtaposition with dark becomes a metaphor for broader, more ethereal concepts.”
His celebration of the landscape is clearly structured in the very physical nature of the paint, where the manipulations skillfully depict a deep love and reverence for nature. Voigt adds, “The works become a pantheistic representation, almost having a spiritual residue encapsulating the place. This is not an attempt to record the landscape but rather an effort to allow the viewer to experience the particular lightthat is unique to the southern parts of Africa.”

Walter Voigt is a full timeartist specialisingin oil paintings and exhibits his work at the Everard Read Gallery in Rosebank, Johannesburg, Cape Town, London as well as Knysna Fine Art and The White River Gallery in Mpumalanga Walter also gives workshops.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2023

Tswalu-A Wilderness Revisited, FirebladeAviation, Johannesburg, South Africa

2022

New Landscapes, Everard Read, London

2021

Revered Landscapes, White River Gallery
2020

Painting for the Lowveld, February Online Portfolio, Everard Read, Johannesburg
Winter Landscapes, June Online Portfolio, Everard Read, Johannesburg

2018

Kruger –Sacred Spaces, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2016

Raw Beauty –Mapungubwe, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2015

Bushveld Landscapes, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2014

Bushveld Landscapes, White River Gallery, Mpumalanga, South Africa

2009

Mali, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2008

Wild Horizons, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2004

Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2003

Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

SELECTED GROUP SHOWS

2021

Spring Show, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2020

Tiny, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2014

Winter Group, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2013

Centenary Exhibition, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2012

Winter Group, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2011

Shift Exhibition, Everard Read, South Africa

2010

A View from the South, Everard Read Johannesburg, South Africa

2007

Southern Views –SA Landscapes, Everard Read, South Africa

2005

New Everard Read Exhibition

2002

Oil Paintings, Everard Read, South Africa

1999

Everard Read Millennium Exhibition, South Africa

1997

International Wildlife and Natural History Paintings & Sculpture, Everard Read Gallery, South Africa