George Krevsky is attracted to art that tells a story. Ruth Braunstein wants to represent good artists of any background. Alex Meyerovich never planned to be a fulltime art dealer. And the early 20th century art dealers and museum curators in pre-Hitler Germany who forged a new movement in the art world continue to motivate Gregory Lind.
All of them are Jewish and their experiences as Bay Area gallery owners are as varied as the art they display.
“We are the People of the Book,” said Krevsky, who opened the George Krevsky Gallery near San Francisco’s Union Square in 1992. “I feel there’s a narrative in the work that I exhibit. It’s about the profundity of the human condition, and the artists interpret those issues.”
Krevsky’s gallery specializes in 20th century art. He honed his skills while organized several fund-raising art exhibits as the director at various Jewish community centers, including San Francisco’s at Brotherhood Way, in the 1960s and ’70s.
“I’ve always loved art,” said Krevsky, who has a master’s of social work from Yeshiva University and is the grandson of an Orthodox rabbi. “My Jewishness is the filter through which I see the world.”
Many of the artists that Krevsky features are and have been Jewish. Among them are Ben Shahn, Rafael Soyer, Jack Levine, Anthony Dubovsky and Shmuel Bak, whom Krevsky characterized as a “Holocaust survivor and profoundly important.”
“A lot of the artists I show happen to be Jewish,” Krevsky said. “That is not a conscious decision.”
The religious background of the artists is unimportant to Ruth Braunstein, owner of one of San Francisco’s oldest art galleries. In 1961, she opened the Braunstein/Quay Gallery in Tiburon and moved to San Francisco in 1965.
“I don’t ask what an artist’s religion or beliefs are when they come to my gallery. We feature contemporary art with an emphasis on local people,” said Braunstein. “We are best known for ceramics and other craft items — clay, fiber, all in a fine arts setting.”
She joked that Jews are too smart to enter the art business, in part because it’s such a difficult vocation. But she did recall working with three Jewish artists: Jonathan Parker, an abstract artist who paints faces of African Americans; Jane Rosen, a stone carver; and Motti Mizrahi, an Israeli whose work was part of a larger exhibit.
Alex Meyerovich may be extremely smart, but he dove full time into art gallery work in the 1980s. He emigrated from Riga, Latvia, in 1980 and worked as an engineer for Bechtel in research and development for five years.
He said owning his art gallery is an extension of his Jewish identity. “Being Jewish usually means being exposed to many cultures and cultural events,” said Meyerovich, who is also the president of the San Francisco Art Dealers Association. “This makes you very open to the big world.”
Meyerovich’s gallery near Union Square specializes in paintings, works on paper, and sculpture by modern and contemporary masters. Many of the Jewish artists he features “go back to their roots and bring in their religious and personal history.”
Meyerovich is especially fond of Roy Lichtenstein, the late American pop artist Helen Frankenthaler, Marc Chagall, and such contemporary Jewish artists as Donald Sultan, Grisha Bruskin, Jim Dine and Matt Phillips.
Meyerovich advisesbudding Jewish artists to “analyze the galleries and find ones sensitive to the personality, style, and subject of what the artist creates. Be persistent and never get frustrated. It’s
a long road to have a successful exhibtion.”
Gregory Lind’s journey to becoming an art dealer and gallery owner actually began in childhood. His parents migrated here from Germany and Austria as teenagers in the 1930s.
“My parents grew up in an environment where Jews became accepted in culture and society,” said Lind, whose gallery concentrates on paintings, sculptures, drawings and photography. “So I was exposed to all the humanities growing up — the beauty of art, music, and the appreciation of theater.”
While none of work of the Jewish artists he features depicts specifically Jewish content, Lind said that their art “has common concerns. There is a way of presenting art to the public without being a social critic. My sensibility is for putting out a feeling for common concerns without being overtly political.”
Lind said that the 10 years he spent in Germany as a seller of rare books and prints and working in art galleries has had a tremendous impact on him today.
“When I lived there I began to realize how many of the important 20th century art dealers and curators before Hitler were Jewish,” he said. “They made a tremendous difference at the beginning of the century in pushing modern art. If I learned anything from these people it is to take risks and have courage to move ahead and show work that is not always easy to understand, but is engaging, thoughtful, and very difficult.”