Born in Detroit in 1912, Walter Sanford moved to Chicago to pursue formal art training at the Art Institute of Chicago under Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. He also spent a year at Detroit’s School of Arts and Crafts under John Carroll. Throughout his career he drew much inspiration from Chicago’s South Side, where he resided for many years. Sanford can be counted among the second wave of artists emerging from the Chicago Renaissance between 1941 and 1960.

While he embraced a wide range of styles from naturalism to abstraction, he considered himself an abstract expressionist. By the 1950’s, his work was clearly influenced by Picasso. Travels to Las Vegas, Mexico, and France punctuated his tenure in Chicago. In 1952, he received the Prix de Paris.

Later in his career, he established a studio in Chicago, (he also had a gallery in Detroit from 1950-1954) where he began working on a series of portraits of both real and imaginary figures, inspired by the work of Mexican painters David Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. Sanford has exhibited in more than 20 major shows and had more than two dozen solo exhibitions.