WALTER SPIES HOUSE
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Walter Spies' house in Ubud, an address worth visiting to discover some of the antiques left by the artist.
After the Campuhan bridge, on the right, stands the Walter Spies house, now the Tjampuhan Spa hotel. You can still see some of the antiques left by the artist and the oval swimming pool he designed himself. It was in this "bachelor pad" that he invited celebrities such as Charlie Chaplin, Noël Coward and Barbara Hutton. Walter Spies was born in Moscow in 1895 into a wealthy family of diplomats, and grew up in the world of Tsarist Russia. He studied art and was greatly influenced by Expressionism, Futurism and Cubism. Arrested in Moscow during the Revolution, he was sent to a concentration camp, from which he managed to escape. He managed to reach Germany, where he held his first exhibitions. But then he decided to leave for India. He arrived in Bali in 1925, after a trip to Java. He settled in Ubud, in the palace of Cokorda Raka Sukawati. He gradually became a legendary figure in Bali. In 1936, together with Rudolph Bonnet and the King of Ubud, he founded the Pita Maha movement, and with the support and enthusiasm of young painters revolutionized the Balinese pictorial context. In the same year, with the help of Dutchwoman Beryl de Zoote, he wrote the monumental Dance and Drama in Bali , which became and remains the most comprehensive monograph on Balinese dance. On January 18, 1942, in the midst of the Second World War, he was forced to embark for Ceylon on the ship Van Imhoff, which was sunk by a Japanese torpedo.
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