Miami’s Master

On the evening of Thursday, December 3, the most notable art collectors will not be on Miami Beach at the Convention Center for Art Basel. As it turns out, there is something more pressing—and impressive—for aficionados to do that evening. They will be gathered in Wynwood at Gary Nader Fine Art for a private dinner and exhibition opening of two of the most important collections to ever come to South Florida.

Gary Nader Fine Art is the largest and most important fine art gallery in South Florida, with a 55,000-square-foot gallery space in the heart of Wynwood. This impressive stature also makes it the largest private gallery in the world. Put it in perspective: this is the same square footage as the White House. So filling the many walls with fine works would seem like a nearly impossible undertaking, yet the gallery is overflowing with the most important Modern, Contemporary and Latin American artists; works by Lam, Kahlo, Rivera, Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall are joined by the world’s largest collection of paintings, drawings, and sculptures by the most celebrated living Latin American artist—Fernando Botero.

These objects typically are displayed throughout the massive gallery, but they are in the midst of being relocated in preparation for one of the most exciting exhibitions to ever come to Miami: Matta: A Retrospective, showcasing an outstanding selection of works by the Chilean master. “This is important because Matta is probably the most influential figure on American artists,” explains Gary Nader. “When he came to live in New York in 1939, he influenced the abstract expressionist American artists, which are the greatest artists in American history—such as Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning.”

I am speaking with Nader in his office in the gallery, which sits off the main exhibition space. The large white room, which has glass windows so the gallerist can absorb the beauty of his collection while perched behind his desk, also is filled with priceless works, including what is thought to be Master Matta’s first painting (Crusifiction, an oil work from 1938 that Nader bought at auction in 1999). Leaning against the wall, it waits for the gallery to be rearranged for the show. Our conversation is taking place merely two weeks before the opening, and there is work to be done. The Matta exhibit will include 50 of the artist’s most important pieces, which Nader mainly gathered from private collections that were sold originally by the gallery. Some 20 of these will be for sale, with an additional 20 up for grabs but not in the gallery itself—there simply wasn’t enough space, believe it or not.

While 20 of the Mattas are already in the gallery, the rest of the exhibit is still en route from various destinations around the globe.

The pieces in this retrospective are priced between $125,000 and $2.5 million, although there are some Matta works that this gallerist holds onto dearly, “because they are irreplaceable,” he explains. Physical Morphology is one of those works. For years, it has been one of only three paintings that hangs behind velvet ropes in Gary Nader Fine Art. It is valued near $2.5 million, a price that Nader was offered recently from a private collector, but he refused to sell; should the piece ever leave the gallery, he wants it to go to a museum so others can marvel at the surrealist work, which reflects layered organic, amoeba-like shapes in striking hues of cerulean, amber, and aqua, interspersed with harsh grays. It is part of a series of works of the same name, later dubbed “inscapes,” or physical representations of the inner workings of Matta’s mind.

Nader knew Matta personally when the artist was alive (he died in 2002 at the age of 91), so he is partial to his work. This is Nader’s fourth one-man Matta show, and the first retrospective of the artist’s work in more than a decade. It is also the most important. Just three weeks before the opening, Nader visited Paris to meet with Madame Matta, the artist’s widow, and showed her what he was planning. She fully endorsed the show, an ultimate honor, as she is an expert on her late husband’s work. Despite her advanced age, she will travel to Miami for the opening night reception.

Her presence is a testament to the quality of the retrospective, which Nader worked tirelessly to put together. “I have been to Paris, Panama, Madrid, all over Italy, Peru, Chile,” he states. “I went everywhere to look at pieces. It is very well curated, because I consider myself to be an expert on Matta, so I know what I can receive and what I shouldn’t receive. We had 50 paintings offered for the show that we didn’t accept; not every work has the same quality, and the ones that we are showing are the special ones.”

While the retrospective of Matta will certainly take center stage, it is not the only highlight that will open on December 3. The gallery will also feature XX Century Masters, a compendium of important paintings, drawings, and sculptures from Latin American, Modern, and Contemporary Masters. It includes those artists whose works hang on the walls of every major museum around the world: Hirst, Lichtenstein, Matisse, Miro, Monet, Picasso, Stella, and Warhol, amongst dozens of others. XX Century Masters will be the largest collection of blue-chip artists on display in the city during the fair, thus calling to the major art collectors from around the globe. So it won’t be a surprise when international art aficionados forgo Art Basel Miami Beach that night entirely—or at least duck out early—to head to Wynwood for the private opening of these shows.

“The 20th Century show is a compilation of extremely important artists from all over the world,” Nader explains. “Of course, the gallery also has a permanent collection of Latin American masters, and the largest collection of Fernando Botero in the world, including sculptures, like the monumentals we have outside.” He is referring to his outdoor sculpture park that is dominated by enormous bronze and marble Botero works. In 2010, Nader will lend these pieces to Fairchild Tropical Garden for the third time. The sculptures have already drawn more than 30,000 visitors to Fairchild, shining a new light on one of the city’s unique cultural treasures, a fine illustration of one of Nader’s statements: “Art is the soul of a community.”

Nader expects the sales throughout Art Basel and his subsequent two-month exhibition to be brisk and lucrative, a solid prediction based on the results of recent Latin American art auctions. A November sale at Sotheby’s in New York saw a Matta realize $2,490,500, while at Christie’s a Botero painting sold for $614,500, and a monumental sculpture garnered more than $1 million.

“I have great hopes [for good results] because it’s been proven,” he explains. “It’s nothing new; the art market—the good art market, what is blue-chip—I call it recession proof. It is always a great safe investment, because it has what no other investment has: instant gratification. When you have stocks and bonds, you have a paper. When you have a great work of art, you have a safe investment you can enjoy and everyone around you can enjoy as well.”

He also cites appreciation of value as a deciding factor in investing in art by the masters. “The art market is unstoppable,” he says. “Good art will only increase in value. As a dealer, we try to sell the least amount as possible, try to keep an inventory of good things in the gallery, because if I don’t sell it this year, next year I can sell it for even more….The problem is not selling the works, the problem is trying to replace them.” He extols the benefits of the “bubble-burst” that occurred in the art market during recent years, explaining that it served to clean out the artists who were receiving undeserved high prices. “What stayed were the valuable artists.”

So with his celebrated inventory, Nader’s philosophy is that the best customer is an informed customer. Thus it is the mission of the gallery to teach and enlighten both current and future clients through educational programs, both locally and in the Middle East, where he is actively pursuing a gallery. He is also working on an ambitious undertaking of catalogue raisonnés in an entirely new format: online. Raisonnés are extensive projects that catalog the complete works of individual artists, featuring every single piece of work from the span of their careers. While typically published in book format—which are heavy, expensive, and extremely time-consuming to compile—an online raisonné will allow the works to be submitted and authenticated electronically. It can then be published immediately, rather than waiting to receive all of the artworks, which can take decades. Nader wants to make access free to the public, an invaluable tool for students, scholars, collectors, and auction houses.

Returning to its roots, the gallery will also reestablish its program for young artists. “I have launched the careers of 20 artists before, but we put the program on hold when we moved to the new gallery [from the previous space in Coral Gables].” The focus will be on young contemporary artists from South Florida, and a recent exhibition of young Dominican-American artist Soraya Abu Naba not only was almost sold out, but it also resulted in 20 commissions for hotels and collectors.

It is an example of the shear power of Nader’s endorsement, and his importance as a foremost expert on Latin American art. Matta: A Retrospective and XX Century Masters will be on display for two months following the opening in December, bringing thousands of art revelers to Wynwood, which, thanks to Gary Nader Fine Art, is the soul of the Miami art community.

Gary Nader Fine Art
62 NE 27th St.
Miami, FL 33137
305.576.0256