Walter Redinger

Career Redinger grew up on a tobacco farm in West Lorne, near London, Ontario. After attending Beal Technical School, in London, Ontario to study art (1957–1958), he went to the Minsinger School of Art, in Detroit (1958), and then the Ontario College of Art, in Toronto (1958–1960), studying with Jock Macdonald, whom he remembered especially After dropping out of art school, he returned to West Lorne to work and build his studio in the company of Ed Zelenak who had studied with him in London and Detroit. In West Lorne, he experimented with sculpture and in 1963, began using fiberglass.

Reidinger had his first solo exhibition of the dozen or so figurative pieces he had made at West Lorne at the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto in 1963. Redinger's third solo show at the Isaacs in 1970, "Organic Engine Combine", showed, he believed, the impact of the automobile on man.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Redinger was one of Canada's most prominent and internationally known artists. In the mid-1990s and until close to his death, Redinger produced a large body of innovative work. His exhibition in Venice (along with Gershon Iskowitz) sealed his reputation. By 1974, Redinger created his Industrial Totem Sets "1929–1986 Landscape", which he once described as large mechanical chess sets, and in 1978, striped land formations in black and white, which had an exotic zebra-like effect.

Redinger received critical attention in 2007 for his 42-foot long Ghost Ship (1990–2006), considered by many his masterpiece. It was shown in the show Walter Redinger: Return to the Void, curated by David Liss for the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto, Considering Redinger's career over 40 years, it called Redinger's work in all mediums (Redinger did paintings and prints too) intensely eccentric and Redinger himself a maker of odd forms.

Personal life Walter Redinger played the guitar and formed The Walter Band which played at exhibitions. In 1996, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He died of Parkinson's disease June 17, 2014 in Dutton, Ontario.