The Prague-born (28 December 1880) painter, collector, art critic, writer and photographer Walter Bondy grew up in Vienna and studied in Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Paris. He lived in Paris from 1903 to 1914, where he attended the Académie Holosoi. He moved in the circle of painters of the "Café du Dôme" and dealt with the Impressionists, but also with Van Gogh, Cézanne and Matisse.

When war broke out he returned to Berlin, painted and founded the magazine "Kunstauktion" in 1927, which he edited until 1930. The emergence of National Socialism increasingly worried him. In 1932 he left Berlin and traveled first to Switzerland and eventually settled in Sanary-sur-Mer (South France), where he had stayed and painted several times before. His cousins, the patrons and art dealers Paul and Bruno Cassirer, meanwhile took care of the Berlin apartment where his pictures were stored.

In 1934 the rent became too expensive and Berlin dangerous for "degenerated art". A transport to Vienna was organized as sufficient storage space for Bondy’s images was available in his father’s (Otto Bondy) cable factory in Vienna-Meidling. In 1938 the cable factory was confiscated by the Nazis, the works stored there are missing since then. Only few works appeared on the art market in the last decades.

Bondy ran a photo studio together with his young French wife in the last years of his life. He died on September 17th 1940 in Toulon.