Lea Bondi, later Lea Jaray or Lea Bondi-Jaray was an Austrian art dealer and art collector who was forced to emigrate to Great Britain due to Nazi persecution after the annexation of Austria to the Nazi German Reich.
16 Facts About Lea Bondi
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Lea Bondi was born into a German-Jewish merchant family in Mainz who moved to Vienna in the mid-1880s.
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Lea Bondi's parents were Marcus Bondi and Bertha nee Hirsch.
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In 1926, the owners Leopoldine and Ulf Seidl resigned; on 13 August 1926, Bondi became the sole owner of the art dealership.
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Lea Bondi collected art, acquiring the Portrait of Wally by Egon Schiele in the mid-1920s.
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Lea Bondi herself was portrayed several times, including in 1927 by Christian Schad in oil on wood.
7.
Lea Bondi-Jaray made it clear that it had been her private property for many years and that the picture neither belonged to Galerie Wurthle nor was it for sale.
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Lea Bondi lived in Hampstead and dealt in works by Austrian emigres.
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Lea Bondi Jaray presented contemporary artists of various styles, including Massimo Campigli, Lucian Freud, Alberto Giacometti, Oskar Kokoschka, Andre Masson, Ceri Richards and others.
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Lea Bondi was one of the first to show expressionist works in London, an area in which she had a high level of expertise.
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Since Lea Bondi-Jaray had to go back to London, she could not attend to the matter further.
12.
The attorney's answer was that Lea Bondi-Jaray had never given up her claims to the picture and that the Wally only came into the possession of the Rieger heirs through a mix-up and from there to the Belvedere.
13.
The lawyer recommended a lawsuit, but Lea Bondi-Jaray refuses because she did not trust the Austrian judiciary.
14.
Lea Bondi-Jaray tried to recover the painting until her death.
15.
Lea Bondi died without receiving it or receiving any compensation.
16.
In July 2010 fifty members of the dispersed Lea Bondi family reunited to commemorate and celebrate in the lobby of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.