Below, you can find the transcript of our discussion:

Dimitria: Over the past years, you've told me fascinating stories of your grandfather, David Newman. A fantastic painter, sculptor, and what a life he had! I am very excited to dedicate this entire conversation about David Newman, his oeuvre and practice. Thank you for being here.
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Brigitte: My grandfather is definitely, for me une raison d'être; a reason for being, and I'm just really excited to have this conversation with you on record.

D: When was the first time that you realized what he did as a profession?

B: That is such a pivotal question because I think, growing up, a lot of times people have their first memory of something, and I think my first memories were just being in my grandfather and grandmother's house. So, I was always surrounded by this enormous collection of works that he created throughout his entire life. Every little nook and corner in my grandparents' house in Austin, Texas, has always been plastered with his output of creativity. If it wasn't that, it was books about art and poetry books.

I think I wouldn't say I realized he was an artist; it was just kind of brought upon me like this natural language. Like everyone has a mother tongue, and I would have to say being surrounded by the arts and understanding the arts goes a bit hand in hand with that.

David and Michèle in their Austin, TX bedroom, circa 2000. Courtesy of Newman Gallery Naples Florida

D: Was it in a way a conscious and unconscious decision for you to later go on to study Art, European Cultures, and you did a Master's degree at Sotheby’s?

B: I did. I have a Master's in Art Business from The Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London. I also studied European History and Art History at the University of Austin, Texas. That's where I went for my bachelor. I think it's funny that there's like this decision between conscious or unconscious choice because for me, I think the unconscious was always battling with my conscious, wanting to be within the Arts doing something for the Arts. So, I finally caved into this unconscious calling to study the Art Market. I wrote my Bachelor's thesis on the Art Market; my Master's thesis is also on the Art Market, and I previously worked within the Art Market for around 7 years. So, around the amount of time that we've known each other, that's how long I've been active in the art world, and it's definitely where I feel at home.

David and his sculpture, circa 1950s. Courtesy of Newman Gallery Naples Florida

D: I feel like you're also following in your grandfather's footsteps in a way because he was also American. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and a self-taught artist who later travelled to Europe to study art a little bit more up close, and he did a huge grand tour.

B: My grandfather decided at a very young age that he wanted to become an artist, and he was to become a self-taught artist as well. So, way back when, before now, artists did something called le grand tour,where they would go around Italy and study all the Masters from Rafael to Michelangelo. That is something that my grandfather sought out to do, and he wanted to do these little pit stops around Europe to study art and eventually end up in Israel, which he never managed to because along the way, he met his future wife, muse, and soulmate who happens to be my grandmother, Michèle Newman. So, definitely a match made in heaven on that side.

D: Where did they meet?

‍‍B: They met in Paris. As all great love stories begin, it's a meeting in Paris. My grandfather, this American, Jewish man from New York, walks into a Parisian hotel where my grandmother is at reception, and in his best French, he walks up to her and says, "Où puis-je trouver des cigarettes," which means, "Where can I find cigarettes?" in that horrendous American accent, no offence. My grandmother responded back, and she said, "It's okay, I speak English, and they're over there." Then he grabbed the cigarettes and came back to the front desk and said, "I'm taking you out tonight," and she said, "You are not," and instead of taking that rejection as a sign to leave, he persisted. He said “ I’m taking you out tonight and I will wait until you get off work.”

D: When was that?

B: In the 1950s. So, he sat in a chair while she worked, and my grandmother always told me that she was very taken aback by how handsome he was, and she just started to change her mind throughout the course of the afternoon. They ended up going out together, and that was the first night they spent together. They were pretty much together ever since.

They both moved to Italy together. They lived in Florence for 5 years. I think they stayed on the street via Zanobi, and my grandfather was very adamant in his sculpture practice. So, he was always very busy, and he told my grandmother to entertain herself, which of course, a beautiful intellectual lady as herself is very able to independently entertain herself, so that was never an issue between the two of them. But yeah, he became self-taught, and once they returned to America, they settled down in New York with a couple of years in Florida, and he was able to provide for his family and have the art still be high on the priority list.

D: Amazing. I just want to go back to Italy because you've told me this story, and I've also read about it. He worked meticulously on Carrara marble and he created some very fleshy, realistic torsos and sculptures. Some were based on your grandmother's body, others were male depictions. Tell me more - it's fascinating. He was such a great Master Sculptor but also a painter, and that's very, very rare to have.

B: I think so. I think the quality, and thank you for saying that, because I think the quality of his work in terms of sculpting is at such a high level for someone who was never sent to Art School. These are all evidenced in his Carrara marble sculptures. One is the Torso of my grandmother, which is still in the family, and he was very adamant on using Carrara marble like Michelangelo.

He provided a lot of sketches for these sculptures. He worked in marble; he worked in bronze, and unfortunately, there was one Carrara marble sculpture entitled L’oppresso that on its way, on route to America, was either lost at sea or stolen.

There were a lot of complications, and that is something that my grandmother voiced a lot during her life is that with a huge heart and burden is that he created such an immense amount of art, and some of it's just lost.

D: Absolutely. I really like this story. There's this story where the daughter of a young collector, who was quite friendly with the Chagall family, and she put David Newman in touch with Marc Chagall, and on that occasion, he went to Chagall and he said, "Master, how do I proceed further? How do I work on my talent? What can I do further?"

B: Yes, and he responded. Marc Chagall said, "Go home and work," and literally, that is what my grandfather did. He went and worked every single day up until the last three weeks of his life. If it was painting, sculpting, writing, sketching. I don't think there was ever a day that didn't go by where he wasn't actively composing some form of composition inside his head, that was not put down to paper.

David Newman, Great American Nude 20 Century, 1963-1998. Courtesy of Newman Gallery Naples Florida

D: I've seen so many drawings that he did of sculptures that he wanted to realize. It's quite fascinating how he actually translates volume, three-dimensionality into paper. I think he also studied specific shadow techniques.

B: Yes, chiaroscuro. There's a lot of different sketches that have yet to become real sculptures. I mean, the potential is there. If we as a family were to set out and have those sculptures produced, that is definitely a possibility because the inner workings of David Newman's mind are so intricate and so detailed that it would be able in today's day and age to really realize them in 3D form, especially with the technology that we have available to us today.

David Newman, The Founders, 1956-58, Mount Sinai Hospital Miami Beach. Courtesy of Newman Gallery Naples Florida

D: I also want to touch on the commissions. There are quite a few of his works in great private collections, also in public locations in Florida, for example.

B: He was commissioned for creating busts of the founders of a hospital in Florida, and that was something, I believe, he did in the 1960s when they were, sorry, like 1950s, mid-where they were residing in Florida at the time. They were commissioned to create all these busts of the founders of the hospital.

Looking for subjects for his paintings or for sculptures, my grandmother Michèle was also active in that search for finding beautiful, unique faces or just people's energy and auras. I know that a lot of times my grandmother would just be out and about, grocery shopping, and she would just be like, "Can you please come up to our flat? My husband is an artist. I'm sure he would love to create something with you as the forefront of being the subject." It just goes to show how beautiful their relationship was, artist and muse.

Michèle Newman in front of artworks by David Newman. Courtesy of Newman Gallery Naples Florida

My grandmother was always very adamant in trying to promote his work. She has written a multitude of probably unpublished books as well, through the scatterings of her notes, about his work.

D: I think your grandfather, David Newman, the way he approached his practice, he would paint a picture and then let it rest and then touch upon it. Sometimes it would also be like three decades in between finishing a work.

B: That's a very good point that you bring up. He, I think he once stated that the work was never really done. There was always something that he could perhaps change or touch upon, especially he worked a lot with oil on canvas, and as we know, oil on canvas take forever to dry. So that's also like, to his advantage, that if he wanted to change something, it was always somewhat of an option. But that was just the way his brain was functioning. It was so active consistently in bettering himself.

I remember as a child, I liked to draw a lot, and I would show him, and he would be obviously very supportive. I just remember if I drew something the way I didn't perceive it to be correct.

D: I was looking through the catalogues that you have shared with me, and for me, it was mind-blowing to see cubistic works created in the same year with absolutely meticulous, realistic, almost hyper-realistic drawings and paintings of female bodies. He's incredibly talented, yeah, and how can one really move between the different styles like that with such fluency?

B: I'm still trying to figure that out about my grandfather, David Newman. I think that he was able to really move between different movements and also a different color palette. There are times where it's Fauvist, but then there are also times where it's reminiscent of De Stijl or Bauhaus. So it's just very, very, I'm not going to say impossible to understand, but it's a lot more difficult now that he's not around. How exactly was he able to be so fluent in those different from abstract expressionism to cubism to a bit of pointillism, then as you said before, this hyper-realistic sense of portraying the human body? I think that it just goes to show how well he taught himself and how he was just always ready to take on the newest adaptation to what is in vogue in that day and age.

Curator Brigitte Chapman at the exhibition Sex sells so I got you some”(20 August-1 October, 2022). Photo: Frank Blau

D: Recently (in 2022) you curated your first exhibition of David Newman's works, The exhibition title was very tongue-in-cheek, “Sex sells so I got you some” with drawings from 1979. The subject was very forward-thinking, a conversation starter for sure.

B: I think it was just a good icebreaker for one from a personal perspective as my first exhibition for him, as his first introduction to Switzerland. The exhibition was held in Zurich from August to October.

I think a lot of people were shocked within the Zurich art scene, if I'm being frank right now, because nowadays there's all these contemporary artists, ZHdK students who are kind of wavering between performance art or post-minimalism or if it's not that, it's like this act of maximalism within their works of art. So, I thought it was very funky, fresh. But I wanted to do something that wasn't done before or hadn't been done in a long time in Zurich, and I think that it was really important to shake things up a little bit.

The captions within the works itself were à double entendre, so it's a two-sided meaning. They also had a lot of sexual innuendos, and I think it's so important that that humor has transitioned through time, so through at least one baby boomer, one millennial kind of generation to now, where people are also finding the exact same things funny. So, it's very timeless in that sense.

David Newman, Fork you, 1979.
Courtesy of Newman Gallery Naples Florida

David Newman, The Doc told me I was a solitaire freak, 1979. Courtesy of Newman Gallery Naples Florida

D: I was very impressed because, of course, I know I'm going to see an exhibition of your grandfather’s. When I entered the exhibition space, I was confronted with the drawings, it just felt incredibly contemporary, and the subject matter is definitely something that is being discussed in today's society. There were also depictions of same-sex couples, so something that takes a lot of guts to actually depict something like that in the 70s.

B: I think so, and my grandfather was a hetero, cis man, you know, in today's terms. So, he wasn't really in that scene with same-sex couples or this whole gender fluidity. It shows that he was a forward thinker, that he was empathetic to other people and to other people's identities and compassionate to what they experienced in today's world. I don't think that a lot of heteronormative male painters, artists during the 1970s, were comfortable with portraying such things that, depending on which state you were in America, was really highly frowned upon until, I mean, it's still highly frowned upon in a lot of areas of the world. So, it just goes to show that despite David Newman being deceased for going on 20 years now, his art is very present. That's why I think he's such a relevant artist. I really hope to try and make stands within the art world and the art market and prove to them that deceased artists should also be taken seriously, and it shouldn't always be about what's currently in fashion.

D: There was a beautiful detail with the titles on the drawings, as those were typed, and I think by your grandmother. They were bilingual, and she was also involved in the project?

B: So, there's another collaboration example for you. The works that were displayed in the show Sex sells, so I got you some. Some of the works were captioned in English, and others were captioned in French, which she did the translations for. It's the same picture of the same subject matter, just with a different caption, which is also all original captions by David Newman, they were typed, and the originals are in an unpublished manuscript.

D: He wrote many books. He wrote poetry, essays.

B: He has 11 unpublished books.

D: The use of color and abstract work, he also did the American flags. He did a few landscapes towards the last years of his life. But he also was quite influenced by the cosmos and the stars.

B: You can see that towards the end of his life, there was this sudden return to nature. He started a bit with painting, because he loved Impressionists like Derain or even Pointillism, like Pissarro, but he definitely had a return to landscapes. He had an insatiable appetite to understand the universe, and that is so brilliantly depicted within his cosmos or his gravity fields or the Texas Moon series. If you've ever seen a Texas Moon, I can't explain it, but they're something else.

I think that he's just always been very open to understanding what the universe entails, and there's this beautiful duality to David Newman in that he has a lot of religious works. As a Jewish person, he not only read and understood the Old Testament but was also very well-versed in the New Testament, and that had an influence on his work. There are multiple depictions of the mother and child. He also has the Bible series of pastels on paper, but then there's this beautiful duality that he has where he doesn't let his religious beliefs or spiritual beliefs make him narrow-minded, where he also wants to understand nature.

David Newman, Flag 3, 2002.

D: He's very fearless, I would say. Changing styles, working with different mediums, writing, traveling. Very brave, and I think that is something that you really have in common with. You're a very brave woman.

B: That is so sweet. Thank you. To touch upon this whole idea of bravery, I have to say one of the most brave aspects of his oeuvre is when he began depicting the Twin Towers within his body of work. I think that was a very crucial moment in the world's history, and most prominently American history as well, how that affected it. It's an extremely strong image and it's just something that's instantly recognizable, and being from New York and growing up in New York, it had a real profound impact on him when 9/11 happened, and I think that's consequently one of the first times you see a patriotic, almost political stance in his work. So not only there wasn't only because I do believe his work there was a lot of cultural commentary, especially with same-sex couples or the biblical series. But they're all so different, they're so versatile.

I'm just so grateful, obviously, that I get to be the one who has to wrap that question around my head.

D: What is the current status? What is happening with the Estate currently?

B: The Newman Art Gallery is open in Naples, Florida, which is a beautiful space, an outlet to present David Newman to the world. We as a family really hope that we're able to get his work more recognized and more respected within the art world community, and we are obviously here if anyone has any questions.

D: I think there's quite a few questions and quite a few inquiries, and from my understanding, you have a few viewing rooms where people can visit and view the works currently.

B: I would say the Newman Art Gallery operates as multiple showrooms, so there are different rooms for viewing different series of David Newman. Because he was so prolific and versatile, it's lovely to see the different kinds of groupings along the gallery that we have.

D: Are you working on something? Is there a David Newman exhibition at some point coming to Switzerland again?

B: I hope that sometime in the near future, something like that could happen again, where there could be another exhibition, a David Newman exhibition. I don't know; I haven't decided what kind of exhibition I want to put out there yet, so no, but I would love to have his work returned to Switzerland.

David Newman, Vierwaldstättersee, 2004.

D: He did a few landscapes in Switzerland.

B: The Vierwaldstättersee (Lake Lucerne). I think that is something that I love that my grandfather um was still around to create works depicting the Swiss landscape because that is eventually where I ended up and where I plan to stay for quite some time, for the rest of my life.