Leon Shulman Gaspard was born in Vitebsk, near Moscow, into a family that nurtured his talents. By the age of fifteen he was taking art classes, and one of his fellow students was Marc Chagall.

Seeking more training, Gaspard moved to Paris and enrolled in the Academie Julian. He was enamored of French Impressionism, the abstract, innovative painting of Modigliani and Matisse, and especially by the expressive style of the sculpture of Rodin. It was an exciting time because Paris was then the capital of creativity of the western world in art and music and literature. For several years, he showed his paintings in the annual Salon exhibition.

But seeking the world beyond, he chose to leave and in 1909, he and his new bride, Evelyn Adell, daughter of a wealthy American family, began a pattern of traveling with a two-year honeymoon journey through Siberia.

In 1914, he enlisted in the French Aviation Corps and was seriously wounded in a plane crash. He spent two years in a French hospital, and his wife went home to America where he joined her in New York in 1916. In that city, he quickly became a part of the art community and exhibited at the National Academy of Design and the Vanderbilt Gallery. He and his wife visited artist Sheldon Parsons in Santa Fe but more impressed by the environs of Taos, they moved there in 1918.

He and Evelyn traveled extensively from Taos, using every form of transportation to see far-away-places including China, Mongolia, Tibet, Morocco, and Northern Africa. He became adept at drawing or sketching on horseback or in wagons and traveled thousands of miles by pony, camel, river boat, steamship, automobile, truck, and airplane. It was said that regardless of where he was, he always lived in the big world in that he was filled with expansive ideas and creative spirit.

In Morocco, he was on a secret mission for the French government, something he never revealed. He and his wife stayed in Tunis for several years during the Depression because a closed bank in America had frozen their funds.

Although advised by John Marin to become a modernist, Gaspard resisted and stayed to a vigorous, realistic style. He was a popular man, with a warm personality and good humor, full of entertaining stories and romantic songs.

Source: askART