Walter Spies and Dresden: The Early Formative Years of Bali's Renowned Artist, Author and Tourism Icon.

Walter Spies is famed as a multi-talented artist who came to live in Bali and who was exceptionally well suited to absorb and embrace the outlook and worldview of the Indonesians he lived with. Through synthesising original and secondary sources in Europe and in Indonesia, this paper explores why he was so responsive to the culture that he encountered there. It investigates Walter Spies' early and formative years in Germany as a high school graduate and as an aspiring artist in Dresden. It focuses on the influence of Expressionism and of die Brücke (the Bridge) artists, and in particular on the school and garden city of Hellerau on Spies. It argues that, although he was not part of Hellerau in the sense of being formally enrolled or associated with it, he was very much of it. Spies drew inspiration from many of the ideas circulating in Dresden at the time and used them as a basis on which to explore a different body of ideas and traditions originating in Indonesia. Parallels are, for example, drawn between the spirit of Pita Maha and the unity of cultural life (architecture, production, the arts and the environment) championed at Hellerau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]