Walter Spies and Balinese art

“… The arc of his life, extending from the grandiose days of Czarist Russia through internment in the Ural Mountains and the hectic years in Germany immediately after the first World War … reached out across the oceans to Indonesia. For a time pianist in a Chinese cinema in Bandung, later director of the Sultan’s European orchestra in Jogyakarta, he became expert in the dance, drama and music of Java and subsequently Bali, where he painted his greatest works. Once again interned as an alien, this time by the Dutch in 1940, he continued his many activities in painting, music and linguistic studies behind barbed wire, until his life was cut short at the age of forty-six, when the ship taking him from Sumatra to Ceylon with other internees was bombed by the Japanese and sank.

In the second contribution to the book,  a summary survey of the history and development of Balinese art in the twentieth century allows the reader to get to know something of the fascinating artistic world which drew such impassioned assent from Walter Spies and which treated him as a brother. As a guide to the present state of the art of painting in Bali and the circumstances which have produced it, this chapter will prove invaluable to visitors to the island.”