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Gabriel Spat
Born	July 13, 1890 Chişinău, Moldova [formerly known as Kishinev, Russia]
Died	May, 1967 New York, NY
Nationality	American (naturalized in 1948)

Gabriel Spat was an American artist of the early 20th century, though he was born at Chişinău, Moldova on July 13, 1890, while it was part of Romania. He died at New York, New York during May 1967.

Overview

Gabriel Spat has been a shadowy figure in early 20th century art. Though his works often appear in the catalogues of both American and European auction houses, Spat's biographies have been brief and sometimes contradictory; critical assessment of his artistic output has been comparably limited. Recent scholarship, however, has both clarified his origins and afforded an opportunity to reassess the body of his work.

European Origins

Contrary to earlier published sources, Spat was born in neither France nor the United States. Rather, he was a native of what is today the nation of Moldova. Born in 1890 into the substantial Jewish community in Chişinău, the provincial capitol of what was then Romanian territory, his birth name was Salomon (Shlomo) Patlajan. At an undetermined date he left Moldova to study art in Paris, France, then as now a center of European culture and modernity. Whether that study was academic or less formal has yet to be established.

Spat's earliest works date from 1908, when he was just eighteen years old. Scant financial resources limited his access to supplies, however, so Spat begged scraps of canvas from other artists and continued to paint at that small scale for the majority of his early career.

Multiple sources (the latter of them probably repeating one early published statement) link Spat with Aristide Maillol and a group of Parisian artists with studios at La Ruche, an artists' residence in the Montparnasse neighborhood in the 15th Arrondissement of Paris. La Ruche (which means "the beehive") attracted Archipenko, Chagall, Lipchitz and other avant-garde artists from Eastern European countries.

Emigration to America

Forced into an artistic "exile" in southern France as the Nazis occupied Paris, Spat escaped across the Mediterranean to Morocco, nominally under Vichy control, where he was able to book passage from Casablanca to New York, arriving on xxx, 1942. Emigration records confirm his identity as Salomon Patlajan and indicate an ability to speak three languages (French, Hebrew and Russian); his occupation is given as artist. New York City directories confirm Spat's residence during the 1940s and 1950s on the city's Upper West Side. After the war, Spat returned to France but made a permanent commitment to the United States in the late 1940s. It was during the application for citizenship that he simultaneously petitioned for official recognition of Gabriel Spat" as his legal name.

Artistic Output and Exhibitions

Nineteen forty-eight is the earliest one-man exhibition of his work with a published catalogue. From that year until shortly before his death in 1967, Spat exhibited regularly at commercial galleries in New York, in Florida, Paris, and other cities. The work continued to be small in size and impressionistic, even into the 1960s when Impressionism had passed from fashion. His subjects were street scenes in the two major cities where he had lived (Paris and New York) and images of upper-class activities at race courses, in urban parks, and in museums and restaurants. Spat's works were acquired by people of the same social class as his subjects, and included the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson and Ethel Kennedy. His work can be found in only few public collections, however, such as "Notre Dame, after Rain" in the Community Collection, Agincourt, Iowa.