Obituary: Ellen Chisdes Neuberg | Award-winning artist owned highly regarded Shadyside gallery

By Janice Crompton / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Ellen Neuberg never met a paintbrush or canvas that she couldn’t conquer — it was the subject matter that sometimes gave her pause.

“I have discovered, in these over 50 years as a painter, mark-maker, color enthusiast, and social animal, that I need to express myself with paint. My work reflects my feelings about our lives and our world, which seem to be in a constant state of change,” she wrote in an autobiography this summer for a show at the Pittsburgh Center of the Arts and Media.

“What is happening in the world affects me deeply, and each painting usually represents the most recent events that have made me feel something good, sometimes interesting, and lately, often disturbing. I use color intuitively to set a mood or let out my innermost feelings.”

“She was a force of nature, she was really somebody special,” said her husband David Greenlee. “She was a big personality and she was the funniest, most spirited person I will ever know.”

A highly regarded, award-winning artist and gallery owner, Ms. Neuberg died peacefully at her Shadyside home on Oct. 1 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. She was 85.

For 22 years, Ms. Neuberg represented more than 200 national and international artists at GalleriE CHIZ, her Shadyside gallery.

“She was the first gallery to represent me,” recalled Laura Jean McLaughlin, a ceramic artist who completed the mosaic facade on the Ellsworth Avenue gallery, which Ms. Neuberg bought in 1994 by mortgaging her home. “She was so supportive of artists. She was just very, very generous and very nurturing.”

In 2017, buoyed by her efforts in helping other artists and fundraising for nonprofit causes, Ms. Neuberg turned the space into her own studio, devoted to abstract-surrealist paintings for which she was so well known.

“Art was something I always loved, so I started painting to ‘decorate’ my walls with paintings since my own art was affordable,” Ms. Neuberg said in a 2020 blog for the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, where she was a longtime member. “My volunteer work doing art therapy with transplant patients at [UPMC Presbyterian] and heading the UPMC Children’s Hospital Christmas Card Project for many years, gave me the desire to share other artists’ work, as well.”

Ms. Neuberg, nee Chisdes, who was a creator of the ever-popular First Friday Art Walks in Shadyside, found her way to art through a love for music and a childhood beset by tragedy.

As an only child growing up in Great Neck, on Long Island in New York, she was a piano prodigy, so much so that she was given instruction by a well-known piano teacher when she was just 5 years old.

“She was a really, really great pianist,” said her daughter Suzanne Monnier, of Philadelphia.

“She was on her way to becoming a significant concert pianist,” her husband agreed. “She was really good.”

But, when her mother became ill with breast cancer when Ms. Neuberg was only 14, she found herself unable to keep up her rigorous piano lessons.

“Her mother was in an oxygen tent and Ellen tended to her every day,” her husband said.

When her mother died just two years later, a 16-year-old Ms. Neuberg was inconsolable.

“It was absolutely devastating for her,” her husband said. “She was so devastated, she couldn't think and she stopped lessons.”

The pain of that early loss made her future accomplishments that much sweeter, her daughter said.

“The thing that made her most happy was when she was recognized for her art,” her daughter said. “She was super proud of it — I really think that for her, it was like getting approval. For her, it was the most important thing.”

One of her more prestigious awards came in 2006, during the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh's 96th Annual Exhibition, when Ms. Neuberg was recognized for her large painting, titled “Not Enough Time,” which would go on to be featured at The Carnegie Museum.

Before moving to Pittsburgh in 1969 for her first husband’s job, Ms. Neuberg worked as an editor for daytime television at CBS and directed musical theater in adult education classes offered by New York City’s public school system.

But, there was one life goal that she had yet to accomplish — getting her college degree.

She studied musical theater and speech at Syracuse University on a scholarship in the late ‘50s, but dropped out when she ran out of money for tuition.

“She always wanted to go back and get her degree,” her daughter said. “It was very important to her.”

Ms. Neuberg attended Chatham University and graduated in 1991 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

“She ran out of money and had to leave college, so finally when she was 49, she was really excited about being a mature student and getting her degree,” her husband said. “She was very happy about that.”

No matter what she was doing, her mother always had an upbeat attitude with a joyous spirit, Ms. Monnier said.

“She was very creative,” she said. “She was always doing something fun, like organizing a carnival for the neighborhood or making a tablecloth for a national competition. She really was a force in Pittsburgh. So many people told my brother and me how she changed the trajectory of their life at her funeral. I really think she made a big impact on people's lives.”

“I often tell people that we laughed every day,” her husband said. “There was always something funny for us to find.”

Her authenticity was one of the things that drew her to Ms. Neuberg, said her friend Cynthia Smith, of Norfolk, Va.

“She was very inclusive and welcoming and she also truly lived her values; she was honest all the time,” she said. “She had this great inner strength and intellect that I greatly admired. I will always hear her voice as an inspiration to be myself.”

Along with her husband and daughter, Ms. Neuberg is survived by her son, Steven Neuberg, of Phoenix, and five grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations are suggested to Shadyside Hospital Foundation and/or The Hillman Cancer Center.

Janice Crompton: [email protected].