Hans Gabali Paintings

The People's Painter / Hans Gabali, the man whose signature murals dot parking lots and pizzerias all across Long Island
Published: January 17, 2004 7:00 PM
     Maybe you've never heard the name Hans Gabali. If you have, it might conjure up seascapes with ships tossing in a storm; quaint dock scenes with ribald stevedores swapping jokes; mermaids frolicking under the waves with divers; New England foliage and Italian countrysides; unicorns leaping over rainbows. Gabali may well be Long Island's most prolific painter, but you don't have to go to a museum or art gallery to study his oeuvre. In fact, you're more likely to see a Gabali-signed original on the wall of your local pizzeria, brightening a friend's dining room or in a municipal parking lot.    

     Though the majority of his murals are in private homes, Gabali's public work can be seen in almost every community on Long Island. If Gabali's brush strokes are somewhat impressionistic, if his themes lean toward the familiar, if his palette of latex exterior paints has its limitations, Gabali makes up for all with his eye-catching compositions and whimsical interpretations of the communities he paints in. "He's a folk artist, he's not a fine artist,“ and this is outdoor public art. And that's important
    His style is expressive of a romantic imagination and a fascination with all things nautical, tempered by the practicalities of being Long Island's ultimate painter for the people - quick, cheap, no muss, no fuss.
       Gabali, who has no formal art training, worked for much of his early life in his native Hamburg, Germany, as a housepainter., Gabali did his first murals in Germany before he moved to New York in 1952. But Gabali's career as a muralist really took off only  after he and his late wife  bought a house in East Northport, in 195

         Gabali's speed is legendary. He completed the 300-foot Freeport Marine mural, which he considers one of his masterpieces, in about 12 days, and the enormous lighthouse and seascape on Freeport's Hunter's Marine in nine days. He admits that detail is sometimes sacrificed for the sake of speed. "But details are not important in a mural," he said. "The one who drives by has a  quarter of a minute to look at it. He doesn't notice a little flower or a button.
     Though Gabali gets a kick out of the touches of realism in his work, chuckling, for instance, at the people who try to open the door he painted in the Freeport Marine mural, he considers his work essentially impressionistic. When he's not painting, he settles in among the tubes of paint, shelves piled with National Geographic magazines and countless precariously balanced tools in his art  studio to work on his other art projects, including model ships, canvases, round nautical paintings framed with rope, tiny landscapes on bottlecaps and dioramas

  NYTimes.com
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LONG ISLAND JOURNAL
By DIANE KETCHAM
Published: May 04, 1997
Walls That Please

YOU have probably seen a Gabali. Waiting at a traffic light in Massapequa or sitting in traffic in the Five Towns or Southampton, your eyes roam to the surrounding buildings, and there it is. On the side of a flower shop or the back of a restaurant is a mural so colorful and picturesque that you forget the light or the stop-and-go traffic.
Hans Gabali of East Northport may have painted more Long Island buildings than Benjamin Moore. ''I have murals in Great Neck,'' Mr. Gabali said. ''And Bellmore, Freeport, Patchogue, Islip, Oyster Bay. I can't remember all the towns. I've painted about 100 walls, I guess.''
Now 77, Mr. Gabali has made a living painting outdoors murals. All by word-of-mouth. ''I don't advertise,'' he said. ''My walls advertise for me.''
Take Northport.
''I can't paint there,'' he said. ''But I've done quite a few in East Northport.''
Mr. Gabali said he did not understand why towns would ban his type of art. He says he beautifies the scenery. His customers agree. ''We've gotten a lot of positive comments about our mural,'' said Tony Lettini, who runs the Sunrise Cyclery on Sunrise Highway in Massapequa Park. ''It was my father-in-law, Dominick, who thought of hiring Hans,'' Mr. Lettini said. ''He had heard about a Suffolk County police study that said murals cut down on graffiti.''

     So a Gabali now graces the two-story western wall of the bicycle shop. ''That was a tough job,'' the artist recalled. Because of the height? ''Because it was stucco,'' he said.
As it was a high wall, ''I painted a mountain,'' Mr. Gabali said. With bikers going up the mountain. ''Because it's a bike shop,'' Mr. Gabali said. ''If it's a car shop, I paint antique cars on it. For a tuxedo place in Massapequa I did a historic wedding scene. It's advertising for the store.''
A mural for a State Farm Insurance agency in Freeport could have proved a challenge. But Mr. Gabali chose to paint historical street scenes on it. What to paint is usually left to the artist. ''Most people say, 'I want something with the sea,' '' he said.
     The mural painting started when he was a child in Hamburg, Germany. ''I did the hallways in my parents' house,'' he recalled. ''It was a surprise.''

 A Tribute to Hans Gabali: A Folk Artist of the South Shore

         The people of South Shore Estuary Reserve will surely miss Hans Gabali, a prolific mural painter on Long Island who passed away at 85 on January 2, 2006. Gabali was well known for the many folk art scenic murals he painted on the sides of buildings all over Long Island and particularly in South Shore maritime centers. 
       He often painted seascapes depicting the bays and ocean, fishing shanties, sailing ships, clam boats, lighthouses and other important symbols of our maritime heritage and way of life. A Gabali rendition of the Fire Island Lighthouse painted on canvas graces the wall of the Reserve Office in Freeport. A variety of his classic maritime murals are also visible along Freeport’s Nautical Mile on Woodcleft Canal and other South Shore Bayway destinations throughout the South Shore Estuary.
       Hans will be missed, but his rich artistic legacy will be a fitting tribute to his passion and will continue to beautify Long Island communities for years to come.

 To learn more about Hans Gabali and his paintings – see his website:   http://gabali.net/