Walter Spies at 111 Exhibition: Ubud, Bali

Walter Spies was a Russian born, German artist who settled in the colonial Dutch East Indies from 1923 until his untimely death in 1942.

He spent the early years in Java, but from 1927 onwards he lived in and around the village of Ubud in Bali at the invitation of the Prince of Ubud at the time - Tjokorda Raka Sukawati.

He was active in many areas of artistic and scientific endeavour and Spies, along with the Dutch artist Rudolf Bonnet, has been attributed with influencing the work of local Balinese artists, causing them to work in more modern genres and making their work more palatable for the fairly narrow tastes of Western tourists of the time and since.

A Renaissance man by any standard, Spies limitless artistic energy managed to have a lasting impact on Balinese art, dance, music, documentary film-making and early anthropological studies of the Island.

Now you have the opportunity to view an exhibition, 111 Years Walter Spies - 1895-2006, at the ARMA Museum in Ubud. According to the article in the Bali Discovery, the exhibition is sponsored by The Spies Family Foundation of Germany, Walter Spies 1895 - 2006 is the result of careful research and preparation by Gundel Sholz, a lecturer at Hochschule fuer Bildbende Kuenste in Braunschweig, Germany. For the current exhibition she has reproduced original photographs, many including the hand-written comments of Walter Spies, collected from a variety of European sources.

The exhibition also include reproductions of many of Walter Spies paintings considered groundbreaking in their approach to lighting and composition and now treasured parts of important museum collections worldwide.

Nick has an excellent article on the ARMA Gallery.