Lot 349: Bondy, Walter 1880 Prague - 1940 Toulon Garden in Provence.

Bondy, Walter
1880 Prague - 1940 Toulon

Garden in Provence. 1912. Oil on canvas. 82 x 102cm. Dated and signed lower right: 1912 W.Bondy. Framed.
The stretcher denoted with a label inscribed in hand-writing:
Bondy, Nr. 12224/ Garten in der Provence. Another label with the number: 1025.

Exhibitions:
Kunstverein Bremen (Label, partly torn off)
Sächsischer Kunstverein Dresden, Nr. 17... (Label, partly torn off)
Bröhan-Museum, Berlin, 1994-2007.

The Vienna-raised painter Walter Bondy was also successfully active as an art collector, dealer and critic. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna (1898/99), from the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin under George Masson (1900-02), and from the private art school of Simon Hollósy in Munich (1902/03). In 1903 he moved to Paris. In Paris he attended the Académie Holosoi and was co-founder of the German circle of the Matisse-School in the Café du Dôme in Montparnasse, which became later well-known as meeting place for artist and writers. In 1906 Bondy joined the Berlin Seccession. After the union split in 1914, he joined the Free Berlin Secession. When the war broke out Bondy went back to the German capital.
He was not active as a painter anymore but rather as a gallery owner. He, among others, also issued the newspaper "Kunstauktion" between 1928 and 1930, which later became "Weltkunst". Unsettled by the Nazis, he left Berlin in 1932 and travelled to Switzerland. Finally he moved further onto Sanary-sur-Mer. In the Provencal community he met the painter Camille Bertron, who later became his wife. Together they opened a photoworkshop and accomodated several German and Austrian immigrants, amongst them several artist and writers, who stayed in Sanary and the surrounding area between 1933 and 1939.
Walter Bondy is above all renowned for his landscapes and still-lifes. As his early works feature a graphical approach, does his later oeuvre illustrate from 1903 onwards a large influence of the French Impressionists: it is the oeuvre by the painters Manet and above all Renoir, which inspired him. He dealt with the art of Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Matisse. The painting presented here is a perfect example of this. In his later work, in which the portrait became increasingly important, he strived for new means of expression and turned towards a new objectivity. A large part of his oeuvre, which was created during his first exile in Berlin and then was stored in his father's factory in Vienna, is considered lost due to the confiscation by the Nazis in 1938.