Passionate Neudert keeps it contemporary
By Laura Raskin

Neudert, who once sold former General Electric CEO Jack Welch her own bronze tabletop Leo Smigay sculpture, describes herself as more of a collector than a marketer.

Independent Arts Writer

The Nantucket sculpture artist Billy Sherry credits Dörte Neudert for establishing his career and taking him under her wing after a co-op gallery he was in closed about five years ago.

Neudert runs the Art Cabinet gallery out of her home and a small Union Street space where she specializes in carefully chosen modern art and represents a select number of artists. Sherry is her only Nantucket artist.

Billy Sherry, above, says that Neudert’s faith in him has helped him to perservere.

“I’ve been hugely successful there. If it wasn’t for Dörte, I don’t think my career would be as good as it is,” said Sherry, who creates mostly large abstract steel sculptures. “Sculpture is a tough sell. It’s like being a poet.”

Neudert opens her galleries for the 11th season on Saturday, June 25.

And this will be the 11th year that modern art is alive and well on the island, thanks mostly to Neudert.

“There’s more of a (modern) market now than there was 10 years ago. Dörte’s a big reason. Her artists are remarkable. She has a big influence on the market getting bigger,” said Sherry.

“I’ve found a niche here in Nantucket,” Neudert concurs from her sunlit, airy home and gallery on Dukes Road.

The art — large panel paintings, mostly — is everywhere. On the walls, leaning on the furniture, above Neudert’s bed, stacked in her basement. One cannot help but be envious that, while the art is still on the walls and unsold, it is Neudert’s. What she has for sale mingles with her own collections, from pre-Columbian to Venetian glass.

“It all fits when it has quality,” she said.

It is instantly clear that Neudert’s work is beyond a source of income and is, instead, her lifeblood. Her excitement particularly about contemporary art is evident in her body language, the way her voice gets breathy on the subject and the way her eyes shine.

“I’m not a marketer. I’m more a collector. Don’t you think if this goes in a home, and people have a special dialogue with it, it’s more important than price?” she asks, pointing to a Gustav Klimt-like canvas by Roswitha Huber that hangs in her living room.

Neudert is adamant about not pricing things for Nantucket, but the “world.” She rarely prices anything over $10,000. During the interview with Neudert the telephone rings. She excuses herself to answer and then paces, talking quickly, seemingly to someone she has never met who is interested in something she has.

When she gets off the phone, she says that a man who received the email invitation to her opening that she sent that morning was calling with interest in her new artist, Wilfredo Chiesa.

Chiesa, an art professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, made a series of 100 paintings, all around the theme of the gothic arc. He was inspired when he saw a series of still lifes in Madrid by 20th century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi.

Neudert has several of Chiesa’s “Arcos.” Two are 60 inches square. Neudert’s new customer wanted to buy both, sight unseen, for $15,000 each, she reported when she hung up.

Neudert came from an artistic background in Germany. Her father-in-law and her former husband were art professors.

“Our discussion in the family was never money, we only loved art and collected art. Our children were all artistic because they were inspired in an atmosphere where something that you can’t buy, counts,” she said. Neudert quoted Russian-born abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky in a roundabout way, saying, “It is the heart that counts. If it is not going, it cannot reach. I was so convinced and passionate – I could enter a painting and have a dialogue.”

Ten years ago, after raising her children and living a dutiful life – first with her father, who Neudert said was a general in World War I and then a Nazi (“that was the drama of my life”) and then her husband – she went through a painful divorce.

She left Munich at the urging of a Nantucket friend who told Neudert to come and cry on her shoulder.

Neudert had not had a job, but she knew about balance, composition and color. She had an eye. She opened a gallery.

“I knew I needed to honor the artist, a space where they could blossom,” she said.

It never would have happened in Germany. For one, the audience there was “less open. Here, they are open, modest, curious, trusting,” said Neudert.

Second, Neudert needed the idealism America offered, if only in spirit: if you work hard, you can make it.

“Germans are very pedantic about having a (university degree). That’s the beautiful difference between Germany and America. Here, you are what you are … I recognized my potential. I was too shy to believe I had any talents,” she said.

“I understood the restrictions on myself and my children. I wanted to break the spell.” Neudert and her husband had never let their children listen to anything but classical music in the home. “I wanted to listen to rock ‘n roll. I went the Muse and the Chicken Box. I felt young,” said Neudert.

“I came here totally innocent. I opened myself up to let them learn my taste,” said Neudert of training her customers. She filled her home as she would if it was just that and not a gallery, and it worked.

Neudert agrees with Sherry. Nantucket is not a place for contemporary art.

“I think I add something really serious. Young artists come to me and I tell them, ‘Dare to follow your heart.’ I think I broke the ice 10 years ago. (My collection) is emotional, not sentimental,” she said.

The customers have come around, and Neudert has an ardently loyal fan base. Some have filled their homes with her pieces.

Jack Welch, the former General Electric CEO, begged Neudert to sell him a bronze tabletop Leo Smigay sculpture of her own, one that was most definitely not for sale. Neudert initially resisted before giving in. “I’d been having a dialogue with it. He said he wanted my energy.”

There are some that Neudert will never part with, like a Fuller Potter above her staircase. Potter was a contemporary and friend of Jackson Pollock. Neudert has been having a dialogue with that one for too long.

Besides Chiesa, Neudert’s gallery will open for the summer season with the French artist Charotte Culot’s delicate collages, Betsy Podlach’s fresco-like portraits, German museum artist Victor Kraus’s dark and decorative mixed media canvases, Eugene Healy’s collage seascapes, plus Roswitha Huber, Ben Georgia, Diether Kunerth, Smigay, and Sherry and more.

The Puerto-Rican born Chiesa found Neudert while teaching an intensive two-painting course at the UMass-Boston field station on the island.

“I took one glance in her small gallery on Union Street and realized I was looking at something totally different. It was not stereotypical island art. It was modern, contemporary. You have to go a long way to find someone more passionate about art than (Neudert) is,” said Chiesa.

For Sherry, the day that Neudert asked if she could represent him remains a major event in his life. Sherry is forced to make a living as a carpenter, but says that his limited time in his studio makes for a better outcome.

“That’s my love and my passion. When I’m in the studio, I have an edge that might be good.”

Having a supporter in Neudert has also been a driving force.

“She has incredible faith in me, in terms of my creativity. You always have doubts. It’s huge to have someone who has that kind of faith.”

Neudert even suggested that Sherry do some smaller pieces, although she says she’s very careful about her influence over artists.

“It’s worked,” said Sherry, of Neudert’s push. “She’s like an editor. She doesn’t compromise my art.”

Neudert has also become a friend to Sherry, and has been generous. For several Christmases in a row she has bought a sculpture of his in advance, assured she would sell it later.

“There are a few artists who exist through me. That is my happiness,” said Neudert.

The 11th annual season premiere of all gallery artists of the Art Cabinet will open on Saturday, June 25, from 6 to 8 p.m., at 18 Dukes Road. Join for champagne. Call (508) 325-7202 or (508) 325-0994 for more information.

Rob Benchley The Independent file