This year, Hanns-Jochen Kaffsack and Véronique Martin are exhibiting their work, which includes paintings and sculptures.
“Matter and Temporality, Rebirth and Transfiguration” is the theme of the 2026 edition. Metamorphosis, as a process of physical transformation, can be likened to the creative process, in that the artist explores ways to transform the world. The artist seeks a result more closely tied to contemplation, with the work evoking emotion and challenging reason. In art, transfiguration involves the transformation of a figure, a form, space, or an aspect into another. Launched in 1998 by the Vignerons Indépendants du Var, Art & Vin invites visual artists, painters, sculptors, photographers, ceramicists, and street artists each year to install their works or stage performances in iconic locations such as wine cellars, wine stores, or amidst the vineyards.
For the 2026 edition, the Domaine du Deffends welcomes two artists whose artistic approaches resonate directly with the theme of transfiguration. Hanns-Jochen Kaffsack, born in 1950 in Herborn near Frankfurt, spent the first part of his career as a press correspondent across Europe and the United States before devoting himself to painting upon his retirement in 2015. A self-taught artist influenced by German Expressionism, Emil Nolde, the Nabis, Félix Vallotton, and Édouard Vuillard, he works in gouache with a deliberate luminous intensity, going against the grain of flashy modernism. His landscapes, animals, and portraits proclaim that color can be, in these dark times, an act of resistance and a message of hope. For him, metamorphosis is that of the gaze: transforming what one sees into what one feels, turning nature into a language.
Véronique Martin takes the opposite path, moving from history toward the material. A medieval art historian turned ceramicist, she worked in graphic design and web design before turning to stoneware and the coil-building technique—an ancient method that involves building a form through the patient layering of clay coils. Her vases and sculptures, ranging from 20 to 50 cm in size, serve as bridges between a millennia-old technique and resolutely contemporary forms, literally embodying the theme of rebirth: a material from the depths of time, transformed by a modern sensibility.
Together, their works will find a setting worthy of them at the Domaine du Deffends: each year, from winter pruning to harvest, the vineyard itself tells the story of its own transformation. Art & Vin 2026 will take place at the heart of the estate, in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, within the Coteaux Varois en Provence appellation.
Free admission; open during store hours from July 15 to August 30, 2026. The exhibition is held in the aging cellar behind the store.
Opening reception on July 15 at 6:30 p.m.
