At Newman Art Gallery, near Naples’ Third Street South, three generations of women carry forward the work of the artist, husband, father and grandfather who chronicled their lives.
Great names in art live on through analysis of their work, the letters they left behind, the moments they chose to document. It’s a partial portrait, a half-rendered version of a life told by those who knew the art but not the person. At Newman Art Gallery, you find a different portrait: one shaped by dinner table memories and the tether of shared blood. An artist’s legacy seen through the eyes of family.
Inside the petite Naples gallery, positioned just off Third Street South, rough-hewn abstracts burst with color alongside monochrome, pen-and-ink portraiture. Varied in style, size, medium and subject, the rotating displays are sourced entirely from the late, genre-exploring David Newman (1927-2005). While less well-known than contemporaries like Salvador Dalí, David’s early sculptural work and later paintings and drawings drew international acclaim and representation from prestigious spaces like New York City’s Seligmann Gallery. For Nikki Newman, the Naples showroom is a living photo album tracing her father’s youth, her parents’ romance and her childhood wonder.
David Newman’s Watercolors (1971)/Courtesy Newman Art Gallery
David Newman Art Gallery Painting Third Avenue South watercolors
The gallery was years in the making, as Newman matriarch Michèle, along with Nikki and her daughters, crisscrossed the country—sifting through warehouses in New York and homes in Texas, gathering family photographs and nearly 7,000 works from David’s oeuvre. Longtime admirers of Florida, where David found early success and creative kinship, the women chose Naples as a fitting homecoming for his work. Nikki opened Newman Art Gallery with daughters Brigitte and Alison Chapman in December 2023, nearly a year after Michèle passed away.
Nikki has become so adept at rattling off the details of her father’s professional life—how many works are in each series, the inspiration behind each canvas, the exhibitions that punctuated his international travels—that shifting focus proves difficult at first.“My dad, the dad?” the gallery owner asks, pausing to attempt to separate the man, the art and the father figure who raised her. It’s a futile task.
Within moments, she’s scurrying from one work to the next for reference. Each holds a memory, a fragment of a larger-than-life man kept alive by the family who remains. “He was the perfect blend of humor and intellect,” she says, pulling a work from the collection of pen and ink works accompanied by esoteric quips and poems. Aftermath depicts a crested turkey head alongside script that reads, “The Thanksgiving guest Has eaten the bird and left me Feathers.” Nikki grins.
David Newman’s Bouquet with Copper Pot (1975)/Courtesy Newman Art Gallery
David Newman Art Gallery Painting Third Avenue South bouquet with copper pot
Nikki Newman opened Newman Art Gallery in 2023 as a living testament to her prolific artist father’s life and work. Her daughter Alison works as a docent at the gallery, where they’ve cataloged more than 7,000 pieces, which rotate through evolving exhibitions.
Jokes and literary references permeate the varied collection, which ranges from primary color-fueled abstracts to Matisse-like gouaches to surrealist watercolors and master draftsmanship. “He graduated summa cum laude from college,” Nikki says. “He could quote you chapter and verse from Plato, Sophocles and the Bible—an avid reader. And, he was the funniest person I knew.”
Though largely self-taught, David trained with American sculptor Malvina Hoffman and studied at respected institutions from New York to Florence. In Europe, he carved marble at the Accademia Carrara and shared studio space with Vatican sculptor Antonio Berti. But, the artist wasn’t the type to lord over his girls’ coloring books. Instead, he modeled a steady devotion to craft and creative pursuits. A letter Nikki keeps in her wallet reflects his affection: “Your zest mirrors ease, a stronger beam imbued by warmth full-grown. The only way to befriend a friend is to beget one.” The daughter’s eyes well as she reads the typewriter font: “That’s the love. That’s the family man.”
David was eloquent and effusive in his affections, but his attention was a commodity. His work was, itself, a member of the family, one that claimed him seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., when he would emerge to a gourmet French dish prepared by his wife. “There was definitely a structure in the household,” Nikki says. “[Mom] had dinner on the table without fail at 7. You could set your clock to it.”
Michèle was David’s partner, his muse and intellectual equal. In a booklet she penned, the multilingual Ph.D. graduate expounds on her husband’s work—and his idiosyncrasies. Decades ago, when the young Parisian girl got off the train in Florence to begin her life with David, he hadn’t come to meet her—he’d been back at his flat working. She strolled over and called up to him from the street. “He started to warn me, after giving me as a present an ancient copy of The Taming of the Shrew, that he was there to develop his craft, and sculpture and drawing were to be his priority, that I would have to entertain myself,” she writes.
Photography by Christina Bankson
David Newman Art Gallery Third Avenue South wife and daughter
Across mediums and decades, David Newman’s work refused stylistic confinement, drawing from surrealism, cubism and classical draftsmanship. His wife, Michèle, appears throughout as his muse, intellectual match and lifelong love.
She describes him as resolute, intense and probative, but never cold. As their relationship bloomed from romance to partnership, Michèle’s influence became inseparable from her husband’s work. “Because he met the love of his life early, and they had this very intense romance and love affair, she was a muse in terms of how he depicted women,” Nikki says. There’s a reverence in David’s female subjects, who appear as recurring motifs alongside inspirations drawn from Bible verses, anatomy and spirituality. “They are seriously beautiful, composed, sometimes regal and always intelligent,” Michèle writes. Most can be identified as his wife—her sharp nose and almond eyes rendered across styles. David’s creative focus widened as the family grew, expanding to include his daughter and granddaughters, capturing their energy and perspectives as part of his evolving body of work.
Alison, who works as a docent for the gallery, was still a child when her grandfather passed. But living amid his work, she remembers. “Do you see that yellow?” she asks, pointing to a cubist cityscape, then a portrait of a model rendered in fragmented planes, then a swirling, kaleidoscopic abstract. “That was his favorite color,” she says happily. The visual language Alison describes echoes styles popularized by Picasso, Matisse and Dalí—though Nikki stops short of calling them influences. His work avoids the unsettling or grotesque features found in modernist abstraction and surrealism. “He was going to follow what he needed to do in his artistic journey and not deviate for some commercial whim along the way. He was authentic and prolific,” she says.
David’s legacy may be one of near- obsessive dedication, but it’s also one of love—a letter left behind to those who mattered most.
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Photography by Christina Bankson
David Newman Art Gallery Third Avenue South front of gallery
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Photography by Christina Bankson
David Newman Art Gallery Third Avenue South inside gallery