Biography

OFFICIALLY REGISTERED AS: GREGOIRE BOONZAIER ART INVESTMENTS CC

DIRECTOR MEMBERS: ANTON BOONZAIER / EMILE BOONZAIER / SYBRAND SMIT

1934 - Lack of work space and DC’s restrictive disposition prompt Gregoire to leave home (an acrimonious parting). He occupies a studio in Long Street.
1935 - Having earned a substantial amount of money with shows in Cape Town and Pretoria within a year, Gregoire departs for England. He studies drawing at the HEATHERLEY SCHOOL OF ART under BERNARD ADAMS for two years and then graphics at the CENTRAL SCHOOL OF ARTS AND CRAFTS for another year. Prestigious institutions exhibit his works. Inspiration derived from the unconventional ARTIST CHRISTOPHER WOOD is revealed in Gregoire’s paintings of Cornwall. Completed works are shipped to South Africa and sold mainly by ART CRITIC BENARD LEWIS. He finds time to travel on the Continent where in Russia and during a painting trip in Spain (with Terence McCaw) his early socialist leanings become life-long convictions.
1938 - Back in South Africa, Gregoire in the South (together with ARTIST WALTER BATTISS in the North) spearheads the establishment of the NEW GROUP to challenge the existing sway of staid, ultra-conventional academic and frequently saccharine art in South Africa at

the time. This Association with regular exhibitiions in Cape Town and Pretoria/Johannesburg until 1953 helps to cement the careers of most of our painters and sculptors whose works are today regarded as investment art. Gregoire also joins the Communist Party.
1939 - The effects of the Depression and outbreak of war on the art market necessitate Gregoire and wife Ruth Buchenbacher to move from his central Lelie Street studio and home to rent a farmhouse at Kannettefontein in the Bovlei area of Wellington. Gregoire’s painting has undergone a transformation: the sombre HAGUE SCHOOL IMPRESSIONISM of the first 10 years is only occasionally evident;
quite obvious is an altogether bolder application of slight-of-hand line, free brushwork, a much lighter and more elementary palette, compositional planes - a curious admixture of influences such as VAN GOGH, GAUGUIN, CEZANNE, MAURICE UTRILLO (besides CHRISTOPHER WOOD) and even the FAUVES with