Viticulture (heading the vines)

Alfred Gaspart

Between September of 1935 through 1936 Alfred Gaspart spent time in Beaune, Burgundy, France chronicling the wine making of the region. He published a book of his photographs from this time, accompanied by a series of letters to his sister about the experience: the weather, fears of bad harvests, the care of the vineyards and the making of the wine, titled 'Une annee dans la vigne.'

This drawing, one of a series about the grape harvest, may have been preparatory for a mural that never materialized. This composition depicts a vineyard worker heading or topping the vines. Gaspart sketched the composition, probably on site, and added watercolor highlights to suggest the colors, creating a loose but readable work.

Alfred Gaspart was born in St-Nicolas-de-los Arroyos, Argentina on August 3rd, 1900. His father was French Basque and his mother Argentinean. The family moved to France in 1903.

Gaspart studied art at the Germain Pilon and Atelier Fernand Cormon schools. Working in both painting and photography he settled in the Montparnasse section of Paris. Using Paris as a base he traveled extensively throughout the Mediterranean, drawing and painting as he traveled. Gaspart maintained a steady correspondence with his sister Paula, who was seven years his elder and she appears in many of his works.

His close associates included Andre Derain, Marie Laurencin, Andre Salmon, Pierre Albert-Birot and the poet Jean Follain. Gaspart's work was representational and his paintings and photographs focused on the landscape, portraits, cityscapes and still-lifes. Because he was an artist Alfred Gaspart was captured by the Germans in WWII and, together with the painter Antoniucci Volti, was held as a prisoner of war. Gaspart was first imprisoned in Saint-Die in Lorraine and, after two unsuccessful escape attempts, in Stalag VIIA in Moosburg, Bavaria between 1940 and 1944. In 1944 he was transferred to Benediktbeuren Abbey, a refugee camp, where he was liberated in 1945.

He drew over 2000 sketches and portraits of the prisoners and kept a journal, which became the basis of an exhibition in 2005, the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camps and is published in the book “Alfred Gaspart: Painting in Captivity 1940-1945 Stalag VII A” (ISBN 2850568767).

After the war he returned to Paris with severe depression, called "shell shock" or "war neurosis" at the time and now known at PTSD. Artist Ossip Zadkine loaned him a studio where he spent the rest of his days painting, until his death on March 12, 1993. The studio is now the Zadkine Museum in Paris.