By Nick Buglione
Fifty years and thousands of murals after his journey across the Atlantic, Hans Gabali's name, to most residents of East Meadow and all of Long Island, is virtually synonymous with art.
The distinctive landscapes he's elegantly stroked grace countless neighborhoods, including East Meadow, where he's transformed the once-drab edifices of the Meadow Dairy on East Meadow Avenue and Borrelli's Restaurant on Hempstead Turnpike into stunning works of art.
"You don't learn to be an artist," Gabali, 82, said in a recent interview at his Northport home. "You can learn techniques, but you have to have the imagination to produce anything. Imagination is the most important ingredient in any artwork."
Indeed, Gabali is not short on imagination. Most of his clients leave it up to him to decide what should be painted. Sometimes they don't have a choice.
"We had a few ideas of what we wanted and he said 'go inside, I paint from my head'," said Ernie Hatzelman, owner of the Meadow Diary, adding that he was nonetheless ecstatic with the product. "He did a great job. Everybody that comes in compliments us."
Born the son of a sailor that doubled as an artist, Gabali seemed to be destined for a career in art. "My father was an artist and other members of my family were artists. I just got into it," he said, noting that he too studied art.
Yet, growing up in the tough times of post-World War II Germany, becoming an artist was not an economically-viable option. So, Gabali did the next best thing.
"I became a house painter and then combined that with my artistic abilities," he said. "You can't just say 'I'm an artist, hire me,'"
In 1952, Gabali left Germany for America, settling briefly in Brooklyn where he continued to paint houses and nurtured his love of art.
While painting a home in Flushing, Queens one year later, Gabali, then barely able to speak English, was inspired to throw a little creativity into his work.
"The people that lived there went out on an errand for a couple of hours and I painted a mural on their basement wall," without the homeowner's permission, he said. It was an event that would change the course of his life.
"When they came home they said 'that's too good for us,' and they paid me for it," he added.
It wasn't, however, until 1956, when Gabali moved into his current Northport home and painted a mural of a seaside landscape on his living room wall, that he decided to turn his artistic talent into a business.
"Then I went out to businesses and I advertised that I could paint murals and the response was pretty good," he said. "I took an ad out in Newsday and then the calls just came in."
And the calls haven't stopped for 46 years. Since starting his business, Gabali estimates he's painted some 4,500 murals, both indoor and outdoor, although he figures 90 percent of his works are inside.
"I haven't advertised for the last 20 years," Gabali said, his paintings and reputation are advertising enough. "Wherever I go people know my name, the don't know me, they know my name."
He was adamant about not publicizing what he charges as his daily rate, leading one to believe these are more ventures of passion than profit.
His art is well known in East Meadow, and aside from the paintings on the Meadow Dairy and Borrelli's, he's recently completed murals on the field house of the East Meadow Little League and inside the confines of La Novella, as well as numerous private homes.
"I'm pretty fast. If the mural is not too big I can finish it in one day," he said, noting that he can easily knock out four a week.
He uses regular latex house paint, working with 50 colors. Though they vary in size, the murals can be enormous. His largest, located in Freeport, spans five different walls and is roughly 350-feet long.
"I love what he did here, I figured he knew best so I let him decide what to paint," said Frank Borrelli, owner of Borrelli's Restaurant. "First I just had him paint one section and I like what he did so much I had him do the rest of the wall."
Gabali appears to primarily paint landscapes--quaint towns nestled in rolling hills amidst waterfalls and the like--but he stressed that's not exclusively what he does. Having grown up in a seafaring town, he has a love for the ocean and admitted he enjoys painting marine-oriented murals, which incidentally led to another of his unique hobbies.
"I was painting all of these boats so I wanted to know how they were constructed so I building model ships," he said.
When he's not making murals, Gabali's mind appears to never stray far from art, as he spends a great deal of time at home painting in his workshop.
Although he's known for his enormous works, he also painstakingly paints images on seashells and bottle caps that he converts into magnets and sells for about $3.50 a piece. "I make the largest and the smallest paintings on Long Island," he joked.
Despite his age, Gabali has shown no signs of slowing down, let alone retiring. "I America you are discriminated of because your age," he said. "You don't know anything if you are old, you can't do anything that's the belief."
His body of work certainly appears to dispel that stereotype. "I'll keep working until I can't work anymore," Gabali said. "Whatever I do I put my heart into and try to do the best I can do."
