Celebrating Art's Underdogs

Chasing brands is a favorite pastime for many consumers.

Gucci, Versace, Nike—plenty are willing to shell out big bucks to get their hands on them, even going into debt to own a little piece of prestige the label promises.

The same is true in the art world, with collectors running after works by Warhol, Picasso or Matisse while ignoring the lesser-known artists of equal or perhaps greater talent.

Dennis Calabi intends to stop this insanity.

The owner of downtown’s Calabi Gallery views himself as a promoter of unknown painters, men and women who often go for years, or perhaps their entire lives, without getting recognition that comes with shows, gallery representation and works that sell for thousands of dollars.

“I see my gallery as a place for obscure artists, the ones in the shadows,” says Calabi, who honed an eye for interesting pieces in more than four decades as a conservator and art restorer. “There is so much great art out there quietly waiting to enrich the lives of those who can pause for a moment and see and feel.”

Calabi is the son of an Italian father and Austrian mother who fled Europe during World War II. He grew up on a farm in New York’s Hudson River Valley and was drawn to art from an early age. He apprenticed for an art restorer in Boston at just 18 and slowly began amassing paintings.

“Some I’d buy at garage sales, or used book shops or from painters I knew,” Calabi says. “I was always looking for high quality stuff that was underappreciated and you know, some of it turned out to be quite valuable.”

The gallery opened three years ago on Petaluma Boulevard North and focuses on 20^th century artists, including several local painters like Robert McChesney, Warren Bellows and Seymour Tubis.

McChesney, who lived in Petaluma and died in 2008, is a favorite of Calabi. The abstract painter whose geometric and colorful canvases are stunning and bear a resemblance to Matisse’s later works never succeeded in putting on a major show or earning a lot of money for his work.

“He never got proper representation because he couldn’t be fit into one box,” Calabi says. “He is just one of many of the underdogs of art history…but to me they are the most interesting, because they followed their own nose.”

Last month, the gallery unveiled a new show titled “100 Years of Bay Area Art,” an exhibit of personally selected works of Calabi’s favorite artists. These include Minerva Chapman, Perham Nahl, Louis Siegrist, Roy DeForest and many others. An opening reception will be held Sunday, March 11 from 1pm to 4pm. For more information, visit the gallery online at calabigallery.com