Walter Battiss was born in the Karoo town of Somerset East. His interest in archaeology and rock art began after his family moved to Koffiefontein in 1917, and it remained one of his main influences throughout his life. In 1919 the Battiss family settled in Fauresmith where Walter completed his education, matriculating in 1923. He took a job as a clerk in the Rustenburg Magistrates court in 1924. His spare time was spent painting.
After receiving his teaching diploma in 1933 he began to work at the Park School in Turffontein, Johannesburg. In 1936 he was appointed Art Master at Pretoria Boys School. He worked there for the next 30 years – with sporadic interruptions – and began to seriously study rock art.
Walter Battiss was a founding member of The New Group. He was unique in that he had not studied in Europe. In 1938 he visited Europe for the first time and met Abbé Henri Breuil. The following year Battiss published his first book titled ‘The Amazing Bushmen’. He married Grace Anderson, a renowned art-educationalist in 1940. It was at this stage that his previously realistic style of painting began to take on an hieratic, symbolic character.
In 1944 Walter Battiss became the first South African artist to ever represent rock art from a purely aesthetic point of view through his exhibition of copies of rock paintings. Four years later, in 1948, he ventured out into the Namib Desert where he lived among the Bushmen for a time. It was also the year that Battiss won the bronze medal and diploma for painting and woodcuts at the International Olympiad Exhibition.
While
exhibiting a collection of South African art with the International Art Club in
Turin, Italy in 1949, Walter Battiss had
his first meeting with Pablo Picasso and Gino Severini
