Ellen Chisdes Neuberg is well known in Pittsburgh as a visual artist and as the proprietor of Gallerie Chiz in Shadyside for 22 years, but many don’t realize that she began her arts career as a musician.
She closed the gallery in 2017 but maintains the distinctive mosaic-fronted building on Ellsworth Avenue as her studio. Currently a solo exhibition of her work is at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg.
Arts institutions have been proactive in designing new ways to serve their patrons in response to the intermittent shut downs this year, and The Westmoreland has placed the 11 paintings of Ms. Neuberg’s show on its website along with an artist’s statement and other information. (https://thewestmoreland.org/exhibitions/ellen-chisdes-neuberg-living-a-lifea-puzzlement)
In addition viewers may peruse more than 100 paintings on the studio website along with the artist’s biographical information detailing a rich and varied life. The indefatigable 81-year old Shadyside resident is prodigious and works in her studio six days a week. (http://www.galleriechiz.com)
Ms. Neuberg has described her style as “abstract-surrealist,” but she doesn’t limit her expression to the confines of a specific genre.
In “A Clean Slate,” for example, she points to a white boot amid a field of otherwise amorphous forms floating in a vibrantly colored and active composition.
Sometimes others find elements she hadn’t intended.
Is there a grouping of heads meeting for “The Conversation,” or are those simply complementary patches of paint?
“People have always found faces in my abstracts,” she says. As to whether they are intentional on her part, she says, “It’s kind of subconscious, a lot of that.”
Ms. Neuberg was headed for a career as a classical pianist when her mother became ill and died when she was 16, derailing those ambitions. Later she studied musical theater, speech and art therapy, and at age 52 she returned to school to earn a B.A. in psychology from Chatham College (now Chatham University).
“I’ve always been interested in people,” she says.
She’s also always been political, devoured mystery books, enjoyed theater. But she doesn’t over-think her paintings.
“I paint what’s sort of in my gut.”
The Westmoreland exhibition, which continues through Feb. 7, is titled “Living A Life … A Puzzlement.”
The inspiration came from a song, “A Puzzlement,” sung by the King of Siam in the Broadway musical “The King and I.” It begins “When I was a boy, world was better spot/ What was so was so, what was not was not.”
“He was puzzled by the way the world has changed, and that’s how I’ve been feeling,” Ms. Neuberg says. The paintings for the exhibition were created in 2019, so they have taken on additional meaning having debuted during the pandemic.
These paintings, she says, “are a little different from my normal work ...They deal with the ways our lives and our world seem to be in constant and sometimes complex states of change.”
In some canvas areas she uses transparent applications of paint to suggest mystery, a layering similar to what people adopt. They may “look happy on the outside, but that doesn’t show what’s going on inside, what’s underneath the facade that we always walk around with. This is who we are, the exterior, but not everything is seen.”
As a nod to her ongoing musings a small sculpture is included in the museum show. It incorporates an old radio/television that stopped functioning when the country went digital. “It’s about obsolescence and about how nothing is the way it used to be.”
She says it’s been “quite a journey through these 81 years. When I talk with people, they have four or six items on their bucket list. I don’t have one. I just try living my life and what ends up happens to be.
“I just take it as it comes.”
For more information, or to arrange to visit the museum or the studio, visit the above-listed websites or call 412-441-6005 (studio) or 724-837-1500 (museum).
M. Thomas: mthomas@post-gazette.com.
First Published: January 28, 2021, 7:02 p.m.
