Lea Bondi

[1] The Würthle Gallery, which she ran, was "Aryanized" by Nazis and her art collection, including the Portrait of Wally by Egon Schiele, extorted.

The expanded company published contemporary and modern original graphics from Austria by artists such as Faistauer, Itten, Jungnickel, Kubin and Schiele.

[8] Following the Aryanization of the Würthle gallery, Friedrich Welz visited Bondi-Jaray in her home at Weißgerberlände 38, on the Danube Canal the day before the planned departure for London, 17 March 1939.

Lea Bondi-Jaray made it clear that it had been her private property for many years and that the picture neither belonged to Galerie Würthle nor was it for sale.

The previous owner was Arthur Rowland Howell (1881–1956), who had sold works by contemporary English artists such as Frances Hodgkins and David Jones there.

Lea Jaray presented contemporary artists of various styles, including Massimo Campigli, Lucian Freud, Alberto Giacometti, Oskar Kokoschka, André Masson, Ceri Richards and others.

[17] In 1950 she showed her Contemporary Austrian Painters gallery in cooperation with the Albertina and the Federal Ministry for Education, which is responsible for culture.

Agatha Sadler, Otto Brill's younger daughter, who was in charge of the range of books, secured the name and, after a long period of building work at various addresses, was able to set up what would later become a famous antiquarian bookshop, St. George’s Gallery Books Ltd.[18] The British art critic William Feaver wrote of Lea Jaray: “In her London gallery she presented international artists,“ Known and Unknown ”, as the title of a group exhibition in which Lucian Freud was represented.

[20] The gallery's collection, including 47 works of art by Anton Kolig, as well as the Schiele painting “Wally” from 1912, whose legal owner was Lea Bondi-Jaray, were considered lost.

[23] In January 1998, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau placed Wally (and Dead City III of 1912, another allegedly Nazi-looted work) under subpoena as part of an investigation into whether the pictures were stolen objects brought illegally into New York State.

It was on loan at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was subsequently in state custody for more than ten years as the subject of legal disputes between Bondi-Jaray's heirs and the collector Rudolf Leopold.

In July 2010 fifty members of the dispersed Bondi family reunited to commemorate and celebrate in the lobby of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.

"Andre Bondi, Lea’s grandnephew...spoke movingly and emotionally of his father Henry‘s efforts to right a historic wrong.

[29] The film presented the history of the artwork and the positive impact that Lea Bondi's struggle to recover it had on restitution efforts for Nazi looted art.