Walter Darby Bannard was born on September 23, 1934, and died on October 2, 2016.

He was an American abstract painter.

He attended Phillips Exeter Academy (class of 1952) and Princeton University, where he struck up a friendship and working relationship with Frank Stella, which continued after graduation and eventuated in the extreme minimalism both artists engaged in around 1959 and thereafter.

Walter first paintings from the 1959-1965 period contained few forms, as little as a single band painted around a field of color, and then developed into somewhat more complex geometric forms by the mid-1960s.

During the late 1960s the forms dissolved into pale, atmospheric fields of color applied with rollers and paint-soaked rags.

Walter Darby Bannard was associated with Lyrical Abstraction, Minimalism, Formalism (art), Post-painterly Abstraction and Color Field painting.

Walter Darby Bannard was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1968.

Walter Darby Bannard passed at 82 years old.