Walter Bondy

Still life with candlesticks , around 1908

Walter Bondy (born December 28, 1880 in Prague , † September 17, 1940 in Toulon ) was a painter, gallery owner, art collector and critic, and member of the Berlin Secession, known in particular for his landscape painting and still lifes .

Life

Walter Bondy came from an Austrian Jewish industrial family with Prague roots and grew up in Vienna. His father Otto Bondy (1844–1928) married Julie Cassirer (1860–1914), the daughter of the entrepreneur Marcus Cassirer, who came from there in Breslau in 1878 . Walter was the eldest son of the family and he had four siblings: Hans Bondy (1881–1917, suicide), Antoinelle (1883–1961, later wife of Ernst Cassirer ), Martha Maria (1888–1942, later wife of Oscar Pollack (both Deported in 1942)) and Edith Lilli (1893–1977, later wife of Maximillian Waller). After the birth of Walter, the couple moved from Prague to Vienna in 1880 . In 1882 Otto Bondy founded his cable factory named after him in Penzing near Vienna , which was located in Vienna-Meidling from 1904 and soon after became known as Kabelfabrik und Drahtindustrie AG Wien (KDAG). His nephew Hugo Cassirer came to him after completing his studies, before becoming a partner in the cable factory Dr. Cassirer & Co his father Louis Cassirer got on board. Otto Bondy owned an art collection that in 1902 included over 70 mostly modern paintings, numerous bronzes and other sculptures. Only the painting “Wallküre” (sic!) By Hans Makart was found in the estate .

Jules Pascin : Walter Bondy portrays Rudolf Levy

Around 1900 Walter went to Berlin to study painting at the Academy of Fine Arts . In 1902 he lived in Munich , then from 1903 to 1914 in Paris . He was a member of the well-known artist circle around the Café du Dôme . Bondy spent the summer of 1908 in Meulan on the Seine. There he bought two paintings by Vincent van Gogh from a pub owner : a portrait of the daughter of the landlord Adeline Ravoux and the supposedly last painting by van Gogh, The Town Hall of Auvers on July 14th . He sold both paintings shortly afterwards.

In 1911 and 1913 he exhibited at his cousin, the art dealer Paul Cassirer , in Berlin. His daughter Rachel Andrée was born in Paris in 1912 . At the beginning of the First World War , Walter Bondy married the mother of his daughter, Cecile Houdy and the family moved to Berlin.

After the World War, Bondy also worked part-time in the art trade with his cousin Erich Cassirer , who owned a small antique shop near Lützowplatz in Berlin around 1923 . He became an expert in Chinese woodblock prints and porcelain. He also wrote some art reviews in the magazine Kunst und Künstler, published by his cousin Bruno Cassirer . Walter Bondy lived alternately in his luxurious apartment in Berlin, Friedrich-Wilhelm-Strasse 19, and in Paris on Avenue du Parc Montsouris .

In May 1927 he had his extensive Berlin Asian collection auctioned by Cassirer and Helbich in Berlin and in 1928 his equally large Parisian collection of non-European art at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. In mid-1927 he founded the weekly magazine “Die Kunstauktion” in Berlin, the immediate forerunner of “ Weltkunst ”, of which he was editor until July 1929. From March 1929 to April 1936, Walter Bondy was a member of the supervisory board of Kabelfabrik und Drahtindustrie AG in Vienna.

In the autumn of 1931, due to the growing anti-Semitism in Germany, he moved his residence to Sanary-sur-Mer in southern France, from 1933/34 he lived there permanently. In the summer of 1932 Bondy met Camille Bertron, who was 30 years his junior. Together they opened a photo studio on Quai Marie Esmenard No. 8 in Sanary. The two photographed many of the well-known German and Austrian emigrants who were in Sanary and the surrounding area between 1933 and 1939. Some of these photos are in the local library.

At the end of 1934, Camille and Walter traveled together to Vienna and in 1935 to Prague , where Walter painted a portrait of the late wife of his cousin Herbert Bondy von Bondrop . In 1937 Camille and Walter married. After the German troops marched into France in 1940, Walter Bondy, who had been diabetic since his youth, no longer used his insulin injections regularly. He fell ill and died on November 17, 1940. The 300 or so pictures by Walter Bondy, which moved from Berlin to Vienna in 1934, were first stored in the cable factory. After the “Anschluss” they were handed over to his sister Edith Waller. These paintings have been lost since 1938.

Web links

Commons : Walter Bondy - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Literature by and about Walter Bondy in the catalog of the German National Library
Biography (Aries art dealer)

Individual evidence

↑ Tano Bojankin: cable, copper, Art. Walter Bondy and his family environment. Catalog 2008 (PDF; 748 kB)
^ ^A ^b Sigrid Bauschinger: The Cassirers. Entrepreneurs, art dealers, philosophers. CHBeck, Munich 2015; P. 447. ISBN 978-3-406-67714-4 .
^ Sigrid Bauschinger: The Cassirers. Entrepreneurs, art dealers, philosophers. CHBeck, Munich 2015; P. 20. ISBN 978-3-406-67714-4 .

personal data
SURNAME	Bondy, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German-French painter
DATE OF BIRTH	December 28, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH	Prague
DATE OF DEATH	17th September 1940
Place of death	Toulon

[1] Tano Bojankin: cable, copper, Art. Walter Bondy and his family environment. Catalog 2008 (PDF; 748 kB)

[Bauschinger_2015,_447-2] A ^b Sigrid Bauschinger: The Cassirers. Entrepreneurs, art dealers, philosophers. CHBeck, Munich 2015; P. 447. ISBN 978-3-406-67714-4 .

[Bauschinger_2015,_20-3] Sigrid Bauschinger: The Cassirers. Entrepreneurs, art dealers, philosophers. CHBeck, Munich 2015; P. 20. ISBN 978-3-406-67714-4 .