Printmaker Margarete Walters was born in 1924. A very promising student at Atelier 17 in Paris, Walters was among a small but dedicated group of women who pursued Abstract experimental printmaking during the height of its popularity, working alongside some of the world's foremost Abstract Expressionists in the 1950s. Walters' artistic career was tragically cut short when she was murdered in a mugging in Boston in 1971.

Religion was a strong influence in her later works, and Walters was comissioned to create a series of etchings to illustrate a booklet on the life of Cistercian monks, compiled by Father Mark Delery of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. Due to the anonymous nature of the Cistercians, Walters' name is not included in the booklet--as was true for the authors and poet, all monks, who contributed to the text. As luck would have it, Delery saved the proofs of her intaglios, which he later sent to her sister.

Walters' killer, a 16 year old boy, was released from prison in 1996 with the blessings of her sister.