Living on the Top Floors, Exhibiting on the Lower

Anthony Blumka today opens his home for an exhibition of rare pieces from the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras, “Collecting Treasures of the Past, VI.” It’s not such an unusual idea, considering his home is the Blumka Gallery. Mr. Blumka, who runs his fourth-generation art dealership, bought the East 72nd Street townhouse in 1995. The white-painted brick structure boasts a long artistic history.The sculptor Karl Bitter’s widow, Marie Bitter, once owned the building. Bitter is famous for his sculptures and the two plazas he designed on either side of 59th Street in front of the Plaza Hotel. He also created the model for the fountain in front of the Plaza. Bitter was run over by a car and killed the day he finished it.After her husband’s death Mrs. Bitter moved to 209 E. 72nd St., where she opened up the garden floor so she could display his sculptures. Although Mr. Blumka gutted the house — the renovation took two and a half years — the garden floor remains the main exhibition space.The floor opens up to the outdoor garden, which was designed by Madison Cox. The garden fits well with the biennial exhibition opening today because it closely resembles a medieval courtyard, with its stone floor and cement wall benches. Its look complements the gallery’s art, which consists mostly of small sculptures made of bronze or wood, engraved ivory reliefs, enamels, tapestries, and ceramics.On the ground floor, which overlooks the sunken exhibition room, there is an entryway and greeting area for gallery guests. The gallery’s office is also there.On the second floor, where more art is on display, Mr. Blumka has turned what normally is the library into another exhibition room. The walls of the library are filled with books, most of which are used as references for his profession. The resource books and a large wooden carved chandelier of leaves remain in the medieval-inspired room, while 10 objects in fiber-optic cases have been added. “Eighty-five percent of these objects have never been seen,” Mr. Blumka said. “It is important to collectors to see fresh pieces.”Much of the Blumka Gallery’s collection comes from abroad. Mr. Blumka spends a lot of time traveling around seeking new and unique pieces in France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. It is a relatively small area of art to focus on, as pieces from the Medieval and Renaissance periods are not being excavated and nothing new is being produced.“We find new material from old collections that are for sale because things aren’t surfacing,” Mr. Blumka said. “There’s only so much material made back then, and pieces from that time that are in museums usually stay in museums.”A little less than half of Mr. Blumka’s clients are museums, including the Met and the Bavarian National Museum in Munich. Mr. Blumka has an art partner in Germany, Florian Eitle-Bohler, who owns the Julius Bohler Kunsthandlung art dealership, a fifth-generation firm based in Starnberg, Germany.Mr. Blumka is the only dealer in New York City for the kinds of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque works of art that he sells.His great-grandfather started the firm in Vienna, and when Mr. Blumka’s father moved to New York in 1939, he took the business with him. “The philosophy of dealing has changed,” Mr. Blumka said. “My father had thousands of objects, but now I concentrate on fewer objects of high quality.” He also notes that there has been a slow increase in value in his field. Mr. Blumka’s house is the Blumka Gallery’s fifth residence. The top two floors of the townhouse are where Mr. Blumka resides with his wife and their 9-year-old son. The kitchen and living room/den, which has a sizeable balcony, are on the second floor. The couple has plans to turn the balcony into another room. In between the third and fourth floors are four paintings done by Mr. Blumka’s favorite modern artist, Christian Peltenberg Brechnuff, who came to the Blumka Gallery in 1975.Mr. Blumka says his individual clients — he has a consistent base of about 20, a dozen of whom live in America — are highly knowledgeable about the art field. Although much of the artwork done during the Medieval and Renaissance periods is religious, the private collectors are not. “Ironically, the collectors of this field in the 1920s and 1930s were Jewish,” Mr. Blumke said.

Living on the Top Floors, Exhibiting on the Lower

Living on the Top Floors, Exhibiting on the Lower

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