Printmaker, painter, and sculptor Bertha Bonart was born Anne Bertha Rode in Rolzhausen, Germany on December 26, 1904. Little is found thus far on her art career or education, though it's known that she emigrated to the United States in the 1940s and eventually settled in California. According to an article in the Oakland Tribune, she studied under Johnny Friedlaender, Max Beckmann, Hans Hoffman, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi (Sunday, March 9, 1969).

It appears that she arrived later in life to an artistic pursuit. Prior to leaving Europe, Bertha was a member of the International Socialist Fighting Association (ISK), which would later operate the German resistence. According to a 2007 memoir* written by her husband, Paul Hermann Willy Bohnhardt (later Bonart), Bertha was hired at age sixteen as secretary to the ISK founder, philosopher and mathematician Leonard Nelson. By 1932 the ISK was underground and primarily included non-Jewish citizens willing to help German Jews and other persecuted peoples flee Nazi powers. Bertha became Paul's underground contact when he moved to Berlin in 1934. Eventually Paul was caught by the Gestapo and imprisoned from 1935 to 1937, and upon his release he and Bertha realized they had to flee, or face death.

Among their trials and tribulations was the disbelief by Switzerland and the U.S. of their accounts of Nazi Germany, and the couple soon learned that many countries were disdainful of Jewish refugees and those who helped them - such as Bertha and Paul. They eventually made their way to Brazil, where they married in November of 1939 and laid low to avoid deportation. They remained there until 1946, when they were finally allowed to emigrate to the U.S. Bertha would later return to Brazil to participate in the 1952 San Paulo Bienale.

Bertha and Paul settled first in Rochester, New York. Bertha became a member of Rochester's Arena Art Group, with whom she remained in contact much later and with whom she would exhibit alongside the likes of Leonard Baskin and Leo Kaplan, among many others. Upon gaining U.S. citizenship in 1952, they changed the spelling of their surname to "Bonart." In 1967 they moved briefly to Calistoga, California, and then finally to Berkeley. 

It was in the Berkeley and the greater San Francisco Bay Area that Bertha delved into her art career, exhibiting at the Mondavi Center and in private galleries throughout the Bay as well as in Napa and Sonoma Counties. It appears that she also continued visiting and ocassionally exhibiting in Brazil. She died in Berkeley, California, on August 18, 1993.

Bertha Bonart exhibited with the Arena Art Group in Rochester, NY, in the 1960s; at the Phoenix Gallery in Berkeley in 1969; and at the Mondavi Center (mentioned in Bonart's book; dates not stated). Her work was included in a show at the Calabi Gallery in Santa Rosa, CA in 2022.

*Bonart, Paul. But We Said No: Stories from the German Underground. Mark Backman, 2007