By Jennifer Martin 
n many ways, Dennis Rosenthal can relate to the Modernists and Abstract Expressionists, whose artworks highlight his gallery in the Gold Coast.
Their intense compositions were born in a time of anxiety and peril: the years surrounding the Second World War. Terrified of Hitler and his rising army, European Modernists fled to the United States, where they influenced their American colleagues in creating art that the world had never seen. It was a visceral explosion of color, pattern and texture, and although on the surface it seemed nonsensical, it sprang directly from terror, sorrow, relief, joy and the ideas that crystallized from those emotions.
While he was never a refugee, Rosenthal knows the stress of sudden, dramatic upheaval in life. Growing up in Baltimore, he and his older sister enjoyed a relatively normal childhood. Rosenthal, always a bright student, was bound for medical school mid-way through his undergraduate career. But before he could start classes, life took a cruel turn.
“Between my junior and senior year, my mother, father, and grandfather, who had been living with us for 20 years, all died of natural causes,” said Rosenthal. “Most of it was linked heart
disease. By the end of my senior year, there was nobody left to go home to.”
Realizing that he couldn’t yet face the life-and-death issues that a medical career would present, Rosenthal started pursuing another longtime interest: the world of 20th-century art. After taking a position with a print publisher, he became a well-respected art consultant; by the 1980s he had established his own successful galleries in Chicago.
Rosenthal has developed a reputation as a passionate collector with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of modern art. Focusing primarily on 20th century American and European works, including Modernism, Abstract Expressionism, Post-War and Contemporary, he is sought by private collectors, museums, corporations and other major clients
nationwide.
“When I first started in the business, I realized that art is much like medicine in that it’s interdisciplinary,” he said. “You can never learn everything about it, which is very appealing to me. It constantly changes.”
Rosenthal enjoys keeping up with this constantly metamorphosizing world. He is studied in the works of Willem DeKooning, Alexander Calder, Salvador Dalí, Rene Magritte, Andy Warhol, Jean Dubuffet, John Chamberlain, Louise Nevelson and scores of other artists, both major and minor. Clients are often startled by Rosenthal’s knack for recommending just the right new piece for their collections.
He remembers one prominent collector from New York City who was visiting Chicago. “He was looking for works by artists that he wasn’t as familiar with,” Rosenthal said. “I showed him the works of James Brooks, who painted on the back of loosely woven canvases at one point. As the paint pushed through the canvas, it created a really interesting dimensional and freeform quality. He was essentially layering the colors in reverse.”
The effect was eerily beautiful. The client quickly started collecting Brooks’ work, developed a close friendship with Rosenthal and continued to purchase artwork from his gallery. “This is a man who had never bought a piece of art outside of New York City before,” Rosenthal said.
Recently, Rosenthal’s gallery hosted an exhibition by Bleda y Rosa, a husband-and-wife team whose photographs capture landscapes, forests, water inlets and other settings in geographical areas where man’s earliest ancestors were known to dwell. The photographs are a journey through the history of paleo-anthropology itself, going through the Neander Valley, Les Eyzies de Tayac, Zhoukoudian and the Gower Peninsula. In their framing and composition, the photographs illustrate the concept that early man carved out his own small and unique spaces in which to build, create, experiment and grow.
“These sites were the habitats of those first individuals, and in
addition, a space for scientific work,” Rosenthal said. “Through excavation, these areas gave way to new theories on evolution – on the ways in which humans actually learned, changed and progressed through the years.”
Rosenthal’s agile mind and intellectual curiosity place him in an ideal position for his work. He provides his clients with a wide range of personalized services, including appraisals, curatorial consultations, provenance investigation and conservation services. To Rosenthal, fine art has much in common with the career he almost pursued: Like medicine, it has powerful effects on those who seek it.
“When works of art are really well done, they never lose their strength, their impact,” he said. “They last forever. At that point we just become the keepers of the work. You pass it on from generation to generation. But the art itself never dies.”
Rosenthal Fine Art, Inc. 3 East Huron
Second Floor
Chicago, IL 60611
(312) 475-0700
(312) 475-0711 (fax)
http://www.rosenthalfineart.com info@rosenthalfineart.com