Walter Battiss remains an enduringly enigmatic figure in South African art history. He is notable for his inconstant and various mediums – including, among others, watercolour, oils, silkscreen, ceramics, and sculpture – and for the collision of influences in his work. In pursuing a new African modernism, Battiss experimented with such seemingly incongruent styles as Post-Impressionism and Pop Art, paired with formal elements borrowed from San rock paintings, Arabic calligraphy and Ndebele beadwork. While the artist described himself as the “first neo-primitive in South Africa”, others variously classed him a “gentle anarchist,” “amateur anthropologist,” “paunchy painter-poet,” and “wandering nude.” Battiss is remembered today as King Fern of Fook Island, a utopian, sub-tropical destination of his own imagining.