Picture perfect
The daunting challenge of damaged art
By ANGELIQUE CHIELLI

Helmut Zitzwitz works diligently in the back room of his Yonkers studio on what he suspects to be a family photograph. As he works, every detail is considered, every inch is salvaged and, like Zitzwitz, every picture has a story to tell.

“We get some interesting people in here every once in a while,” said Zitzwitz, who co-owns Hudson River Gallery and Conservators with his wife, Barbara. “About six weeks ago, our neighbor had an opening with a French publishing house concentrating on religious books and the place was (being) blessed by the cardinal. Various Catholic priests and bishops came in while they were waiting for the cardinal to take a look at what we have.”

One of the bishops who travels constantly between Boston and the Vatican, admired Zitzwitz’s work and said he had a job for him.

“So he gave me a photograph of two women and a boy. I suspect one was a daughter, one was a mother and one was a son. They were at some resort (so the son) had short pants on. The bishop wanted to know if I could frame it but also crop the picture at the bottom where the son had shorts on because they didn’t want him in shorts. I said, ‘All right, I’ll fix it.’ So I made them into pants so I didn’t have to crop the picture.”

He still does not know who was in the picture ­ whether Padre Pio or the pope ­ but was told it will be permanently displayed in a 16th-century Vatican room.

European roots

Born and educated in Berlin, Zitzwitz left Germany when he was 18 with his parents after World War II. “I went through all the bombings and we came here in 1950,” he said. “My parents decided it would be better for me.”

Three weeks after he arrived in the states, Zitzwitz was drafted and was sent back to Germany to work for military intelligence. When he finished serving, he came back to the U.S. and got a job working in the steel industry. After 17 years of performing different tasks from selling to buying steel, the company asked him to resign. Disappointed, the sudden request of his resignation forced Zitzwitz to ask himself a very important question.

 

“What would you really like to do Helmut? And I came to the conclusion that it had to be related to art.”

The Zitzwitzes have been serving the art community for 26 years, and will be celebrating their one-year anniversary of their Main Street location this month. Though he has led a variety of lives, Zitzwitz said the arts have always been a part of him.

“I do not remember, when I grew up in Germany, that there was one person who was not somehow indirectly involved with the arts,” responded Zitzwitz as to when he first started working in the arts. “We didn’t even realize it was the arts. When I had to go to grandmother’s birthday party, it would have been the biggest insult to have gone to Hallmark, which didn’t exist, and give her a birthday card. Now if you made her a birthday card yourself, that’s a different story. But we either had to perform, recite poetry or put on a play. It was always something which we had to do as a gift.”

Rock star of restoration

In 1980, Zitzwitz bought a frame shop in the Bronx where he started doing archival framing work and sold art supplies. It wasn’t until two years later that his love of restoration came into play.

“My parents had an oil painting of my great-grandmother, which was painted by my great-uncle,” said Zitzwitz. His uncle was an art teacher who taught “the giants” like Corinth. During a World War II bombing the painting got very damaged so when Zitzwitz’s parents moved to the states, his father brought the painting to a restorer in Milwaukee.

“When he brought it home, I scratched my head and said, ‘My God, I could have done better than this.’ I was horrified,” said Zitzwitz. “Well, I wasn’t about to criticize my father, so when my parents deceased I took the painting and started restoring it myself without knowing anything about restoration.” When Zitzwitz was almost finished, he decided the best route was to ask a professional restorer for advice. He called Gustav Berger, pulling the name from the phone book.   “I called him up and he was very kind and said, ‘Why don’t you bring it in and let me look at it,’” Zitzwitz said. “(Berger) said, ‘I never give anyone a compliment, but I must say you did a pretty damn good job. Unfortunately, everything you did was wrong.’”

From that point on, Berger encouraged Zitzwitz to get into restoration. Little did he know that Berger was the “rock star of restoration.”

“He revolutionized our entire industry worldwide,” said Zitzwitz. “It is estimated today that 95 percent of all museum restorers use his system.”

With Berger’s mentoring coupled with numerous restoration seminars, Zitzwitz honed his craft and began taking on restoration projects in 1982.

Bread and butter

Today, Zitzwitz’s “bread and butter” is earned by oil painting restoration, paper restoration and framing. He has done restoration work for Fordham University and for the Scarsdale Library, where he restored 26 paintings for their “Female Artists of the Twentieth Century” exhibit. Zitzwitz only uses the best of the best and prides himself on selling frames made by the same manufacturers who frame works on the walls at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “A long, long time ago, we had to decide whether or not we wanted to go quantity or if we wanted to go with quality,” said Zitzwitz. “And my personality would be at odds choosing quantity, so we always started with quality and the same thing is true with our gallery.”

He has repaired works by John Singer Sargent and Childe Hassam.

Every six to eight weeks, the gallery puts on a one-man show. According to Zitzwitz, 95 percent of the artists shown in the gallery have been shown in museums throughout the world. Chong Gon Byun, whom Zitzwitz referred to as a “god in Korea,” is an internationally acclaimed artist who has adorned the walls of the Hudson River Gallery for years.

“When he gets off the plane (in Korea), and I went with him twice, you have no idea the reception he gets,” said Zitzwitz. “He’s on prime time 6 o’clock news for 20 minutes every time he goes to Seoul.”

Scrapping science for art

The Zitzwitzes not only view the arts as a business and a passion, but as an educational outlet as well. “I think we would be better off scrapping all the sciences and replace them with the arts,” Zitzwitz said. “That, in my opinion, would help students learn more about the sciences, including mathematics.” Through art, Zitzwitz believes students would be able to remember information better because it would engage them in a thoughtful conversation and would make a learning environment more interesting overall. “Certainly you will create people who, when they make decisions, are not making decisions made only by statistics,” he said.

The Zitzwitzes will also look into getting involved with the community.

“We have encouraged youngsters and we shall do the same thing here in Yonkers,” said Barbara Zitzwitz. “We are open to having the high school and elementary school children come by and see the work.”

“We might even want to get involved in shows for children or even for 80-year-olds,” added her husband.

The gallery is located at 86 Main St., Suite 302. For news on shows, call (914) 964-0401.

 

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