Born: 1937 Chelsea, London
Died: 2015 London, England
Other name/s: Joanna Bondy
Biography
Artist and teacher Jo (née Joanna Claire) Bondy was born in Chelsea, London, England on 23 June 1937, the only child of recent German refugees from Nazism: exports manager and trade unionist, Paul Bondy, who was Jewish, and his non-Jewish wife, Charlotte (née Schmidt), a graphic designer. The family suffered financial hardship for several years, particularly during the war and Paul’s internment as a so-called ‘enemy alien’ in Huyton Camp, Liverpool between June and December 1940 (the Bondy Archive including his diary and correspondence covering this period are now part of the IMLR exile archives). Shortly before his release, the family moved to Mill Hill during the Blitz to escape the bombing and Paul was employed as a radio monitor with British United Press but was often absent during Jo’s somewhat turbulent childhood and adolescence. She lived and worked in the borough of Barnet for the rest of her life, despite a visit to her maternal grandmother in Munich in 1947 (when she noted the devastation left by the war) and later regular holidays to France. She was privately educated at St George’s School in Harpenden, Hertfordshire and afterwards trained at St. Alban’s College of Art, then undertook teacher training at the Institute of Education in London. Initially, she worked in the art department at St George’s and thereafter in the same capacity at several secondary schools, latterly at Ravenscroft School in Barnet, where her pupils included John Bercow (later Speaker of the House of Commons).
Concurrent with her teaching, Jo Bondy commenced her artistic career as a painter, quickly progressing to multi-media compositions in the form of three-dimensional boxes, influenced by the American exponent of collage Joseph Cornell. Her work was noticed early on by the eponymous, and sometimes controversial, gallerist Nicholas Treadwell, who regularly exhibited her work at his London and Kent galleries - a connection which survived until her death. During the 1960s and 1970s Bondy produced a substantial body of work that includes assemblages, drawings, and ceramics, primarily exploring issues of gender, sex, and eroticism. During this erotic ‘pop art’ period, her anatomically explicit works were frequently displayed by Treadwell. While partly humorous in intent, critic Philomena Epps has also suggested that, ‘in her recourse to fragmentation, to reducing the human form to mere body parts', Bondy's work ‘reflect[s] the dislocation and uncertainty of exile' (Philomena Epps, 'Pandora's Box: Rediscovering Jo Bondy'). She also addressed pertinent political themes ranging from childhood trauma to class warfare, the feminist struggle, eroticism, gender and sexuality.
Bondy remained productive throughout her life including after her retirement in the late 1990s. Many of her sculptures were preceded by exquisite, finely detailed small pencil studies. She spent much of her later life at a home in rural France, where she maintained a pied-a-terre, and drew many of her landscapes and life drawings using sugar paper, crayons, and coloured pencils. She also acted as curator and custodian of her parents’ legacy, donating some of her mother’s pre-war designs on aluminium foil to the V&A in 1983, and continuing, even when hospitalised, to arrange the distribution of her father’s records and to facilitate several publications based on their work. Her father’s papers, evidencing a wide range of political and other exile interests, were donated via the Research Centre of German and Austrian Exile Studies to the University of London Library. Her mother’s papers were donated to the V&A design archive. Of particular interest are the 28 volumes of her mother’s diaries which contain an extensive record of Bondy’s personal and artistic development.
Jo Bondy spent the last six months of her life incapacitated by an unexpected illness and died in the North London Hospice in London, England on 7 September 2015. In November 2017 a retrospective of her work organised by Jane England of England & Co. and the designer Stephen Rothholz, one of her former students, was held in Bloomsbury, London. 'The Impact of Exile on the Life and Work of the Artist Jo Bondy (1937-2015)' was the subject of an online talk ((Research Centre for German & Austrian Exile Studies, IMLR, 2022), and forthcoming essay (Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Vol. 23, 2023) by Jennifer Taylor. One of Jo Bondy's designs is held by the Ben Uri Archive.
Related books
- Jennifer Taylor, 'Jo Bondy: Enfant Terrible or Faithful Curator of Heritage? The Life and Work of Jo Bondy (1937-2015), forthcoming in The Second and Third Generation: Experiences of the Descendants of Refugees from National Socialism, Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Vol. 23 (Leiden/Boston: Brill 2023)
- Nicholas Treadwell, Jo Bondy, et. al., Superhumanism 2: a survey of a current art movement (London: Nicholas Treadwell Publishing, 1981)
- Nicholas Treadwell, Sex Female, Occupation Artist: The Art of Contemporary Women (Womenswold, Kent: Nicholas Treadwell Publications, 1984)
- Nicholas Treadwell, Super Humanism: A British Art Movement (London: Nicholas Treadwell Books, 1980)
- Nicholas Treadwell, Superhumanism 2: A Survey of a Current Art Movement (London: Nicholas Treadwell Publications, 1980)
- Correspondence with Dr. Jennifer Taylor
Related organisations
- St. Albans School of Art (student)
- St George’s School in Harpenden (student and teacher)
- Ravenscroft School (teacher)
- Institute of Education, London (student)
Related web links
Selected exhibitions
- London Art Fair (2019)
- Jo Bondy, England and Co. (2017)
- 'Superhumanism', Nicholas Treadwell Gallery (1982)
- The Fat Figurative Art Exhibition, Treadwell Gallery, London (1981)
- Self Portrait of the Artist as his/her own Model', Treadwell Gallery, London (1981)
- A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Gallery, Treadwell Gallery, London (1979-1980)
- Mercury Workshop
- Exhibition of Painted Furniture, Mercury Gallery, London (1980)
- The Opening Exhibition, Treadwell Gallery, London (1980)
- Women 1980, Treadwell Gallery (1980)
- Superhumanism 2, Treadwell Gallery, London (1980)
- The Holiday Picture Show, Treadwell Gallery, London (1978)
- Add Colour and Mix, Treadwell Gallery, London (1978)
- Italy and the Italians: A View from Britain, Treadwell Gallery (1977)
- Sporting Pictures, Treadwell Gallery, London (1976-1977)
- Bottoms, Treadwell Gallery, London (1976)
- Happy and Glorious, readwell Gallery, London (1975)
- Drawings, Treadwell Gallery, London (1975)
- Nude or Naked, Treadwell Gallery, London (1974-5)
- Harsh Reality, Treadwell Gallery, London (1974)
- One Man Show, Mercury Gallery (1973)
- Jo Bondy to Kevin Whitney, Treadwell Gallery, (1973)
- Boxes for Christmas by Jo Bondy, Mercury Gallery (1972)
- Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings and Sculptures, City Museum, St. Albans (1963)
- Young Contemporaries, RBA Galleries (1960)
