13 Facts About Walter Spies

Walter Spies was a Russian-born German primitivist painter, composer, musicologist, and curator.

Walter Spies lived in Yogyakarta and then in Ubud, Bali starting from 1927, when Indonesia was under European colonial rule as the Dutch East Indies.

Walter Spies was born in 1895 in Moscow to a German diplomat and his wife who were posted there.

Walter Spies had a brother Leo, who became a composer and conductor, and sister Daisy, who became a ballet dancer.

Walter Spies began painting as a young man and was known in Europe for his work by 1923.

Walter Spies later wrote that Spies left the social disruption of Europe after the Great War and ultimately reached Java.

Walter Spies visited Bali, under European control as part of the Dutch East Indies, and decided to stay there.

Walter Spies loved to collect velvety dragonflies, strange spiders and sea-slugs, not in a naturalist's box, but in minutely accurate drawings.

Walter Spies was temperamental when he went into seclusion to paint, he would work incessantly for months on one of his rare canvases.

The knowledge of every aspect of Balinese culture that Walter Spies provided for Covarrubias' research was well-acknowledged by the latter.

In 1937, Walter Spies built what he described as a "mountain hut" at Iseh in Karangasem.

Walter Spies was the co-founder of the Pita Maha artists cooperative, through which he shaped the development of modern Balinese art.

Vicki Baum accredits Walter Spies with providing her the factual historical data and details on Balinese culture which she drew from for her historical fiction novel Love and Death in Bali.