A voracious sexual appetite is evident in Walter Battiss’s large output of erotica. His sexual imagination slipped into far more than just the obvious tropes of sexual imagery. His images are not tempered in the slightest, with great orgies crammed into the landscape of paper. However, they remain naïve rather than pornographic, reminding us of the 1970s ideal of free love without a drop of cynicism. Battiss’s orgy paintings and drawings present an element of voyeurism and kink as the viewer zones in closely to read the details.

It’s interesting that Battiss apparently only discovered erotica late in his life, possibly by this time it was no longer hampered by a youthful bashfulness. Often he plays with these images distractedly, as though not related to sex at all, claiming at the time they were all about the beauty and pattern.