Pre-Bali Study Paintings, 1922

Conte and water color on paper
43 x 56 cm and 44 x 57 cm
Nasirun collection


Pre-Bali Study Paintings (1922) indicate the start of Walter Spies’s familiarisation with Bala. At this time, Western tourists started to frequent Bali. At the Paris Exposition of 1900, which exhibited the cultural and technological achievements from throughout the world, which included a replica of a temple as well as dancers from the Indonesian archipelago. After this, in 1920, a collection of photos titled ‘Islands of the Gods’ by Gregor Krause started to be circulated, which included imagery of the Dutch East Indies. Walter Spies’s paintings were based on the imagery of these postcards.

At the same time, Walter was fed up of the artistic life in Europe. Even though his career was going well and his paintings were exhibited throughout Germany and the Netherlands, he felt constrained within his art circles. In a letter to his mother, he stated his desire to travel. And, in 1923 he left for the Dutch East Indies.

 

About the Artist

Walter Spies was a German artist who spent the last years of his life in Indonesia. After he left Moscow, where he was born, he sailed to the Dutch East Indies after he had been made curious by various Dutch postcards. Firstly he lived in Bandung and then moved to Yogyakarta where he worked for the Sultan, before moving to Ubud in Bali in 1927. He recorded and collected many aspects of Balinese arts, which he then preserved in the museum which he founded, the Bali Museum.

In 1936, he was one of the founders of Pita Maha, an arts organisation. Together with Wayan Limbak, he developed the Sang Hyang dance and the Ramayana epic to become what we now know as the Tari Kecak (Monkey Dance).


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