Overzicht van leven en werk van de Duitse schilder en musicus (1895-1942), met speciale aandacht voor diens betrokkenheid bij de inheemse schilderkunst en muziek op Bali

When he died 70 years ago, the artist Walter Spies was known to only a few close friends. Now he is prized as one of the finest painters of the tropical landscape. This was one of many gifts that he made available to the people of Bali in the years between 1927, when he first settled there, and 1940 when he was interned as an enemy alien. In the turmoil of war and the turbulence of the post-war years, his fate remained for a time unknown and his life and deeds in Bali gradually took on mythic proportions. He was remembered almost as a founding figure, one who had taken the arts of Bali to unprecedented heights. There was some truth in this hyperbole; he had indeed made a massive contribution to the reputation of the island as a centre of special artistic excellence during the 1930s. He was not alone in this endeavour.

This beautiful book contains a photographic record of the work of Walter Spies, a German artist, and Beryl de Zoete, a British writer and dance critic, co-authors of the classic Dance and Drama in Bali (1938). These photographs, many previously unpublished, are chosen from the Horniman Museum Library collection to vividly evoke rural life in Bali, with its dance-drama traditions, and challenge the more lurid aspects of Bali's image in the 1930s.

Lempad of Bali is being produced by the Museum Puri Lukisan in Ubud in conjunction with a major retrospective exhibition of the renowned Balinese artist I Gusti Nyoman Lempad that will be held in the museum from September 20 to October 20, 2014. With some 600 illustrations, the book will function as a catalogue raisonnee dedicated to the life and art of this seminal artist, who has been rightly called the father of the Balinese Pita Maha group of artists. The text will be authored by a team of five respected experts including John Darling, the director of the acclaimed film on Lumpad of the same name, Hedi Hinzler, senior professor and Bali expert at Leiden University, Kaja McGowan, the curator of the Clair Holt collection and professor at Cornell University, Adrian Vicker, professor at Sydney University, Soemantri Widagdo, curator of the Museum Puri Lukisan, and Bruce W. Carpenter, Indonesian art expert.

Between 1936 and 1938 Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead collected more than 1,200 paintings and sketches made by Balinese peasants.