Walter Oltmann (born 1960, South Africa) is a practicing artist who lives and works in
Johannesburg. He obtained a BA Fine Arts degree from the University of Natal,
Pietermaritzburg (1981), and an MA Fine Arts degree (1985) and PhD in Fine Arts degree
(2017) from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He taught in the Fine arts
department at the University of the Witwatersrand from 1989 to 2016.

Oltmann has an extensive record of creative work produced since the early 1980s, including
a number of public commissions. Since the 1980s he has developed an interest in the
relationship between fine art and craft. In his own practice he employs hand-fabricated
processes of making and has researched wire craft traditions in southern Africa. His
sculptural works are executed by way of weaving in wire and using handcrafting methods
that reference African and Western traditions of weaving. He is deeply interested in the
influence of craft traditions in contemporary South African art.

In his artworks Oltmann makes connections to domestic textile practices and explores such
forms of making in evoking fragility and the passage of time. He often combines aspects of
decorative ornament with subject matter that seems somewhat contradictory or disturbing
in relation to handcrafted embellishment.