EUGENE EISENBERG
Aviation Art's Ultimate Collector!

Eugene Eisenberg is a successful businessman, an expert on WW II history, and, by all rights, the world’s greatest collector and patron of aviation art. His collection of over 125 original paintings literally covers every square inch of wall space in his South Florida gallery and penthouse. Eisenberg’s collection is magnificent in its volume, in the quality of the artists’ represented, and in the history and stories that his paintings represent.

Eisenberg is a one-man show when it comes to aviation art. With some of his paintings, he conceives the project concept, researches his subject, then interviews the surviving veterans or those who witnessed the event that he seeks to depict. Finally, Eisenberg commissions the right artist for the project, to bring his subject to life. The process, in many cases, can take years of painstaking effort as Eisenberg and the artists he patronizes become conservators of history.

Eisenberg’s now world-renown painting collection has resulted from a smoldering passion founded in his youth, one he has finally realized in his retirement years. Eisenberg, born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1936, was a youngster during the World War II years. He held a personal connection with war through his uncle, who had joined the Marines after Pearl Harbor. Eisenberg relates, “I remember, during the war, he was able to make me a bracelet with the Marine emblem on it, which he sent home from the Pacific. He was sort of my figurehead.” Correspondence from his uncle further energized Eisenberg’s fascination with the Pacific theater.
Above and Top: In Eisenberg's gallery, wall space is at a premium. Eisenberg arrays his paintings according to their subject matter. As shown at right, this room of his gallery contains European-based World War II scenes. Pacific theatre paintings, which represent Eisenberg's favorite area of interest, adorn his living room.

The final spark that forever anchored Eisenberg’s passion for the Pacific ignited at the RKO Kenmore Theater in Brooklyn. Eisenberg remembers, “There was a certain time in 1943; at the time, I was seven years old and a movie by the name of Air Force came out. I remember my father’s taking me to see it. I was so enthused by the movie and the B-17, that I think that’s the moment when I started to fall in love with airplanes.” The movie also left Eisenberg spellbound with Capt. Colin P. Kelly, Jr., a pilot whose story inspired Air Force.

Air Force depicts the deployment of a B-17 bomber to the Philippine Islands at the outbreak of the war. The main character, a B-17 pilot affectionately called “Irish,” dies as Colin Kelly did in real life, by saving his crew after his plane had been critically damaged by Japanese Zeroes. Kelly was America’s first national hero of World War II.

Soon after watching Air Force, Eisenberg had a chance encounter that would further connect him to the story of Colin Kelly. One day, while walking in his neighborhood, he noticed a flag in the window of a home that, unlike the flags hanging in other homes, had a gold star in the center. Eisenberg went to the door, to discover the significance of the gold star. The door bore the names “Wicks” and “Kelly.” Eisenberg remembers that two women answered his knocking. One answered his question, explaining that the gold star was for her husband, who had been killed in the war.
Eisenberg describes details in John D. Shaw's massive 10'x5' oil painting, "They Fought With What They Had." Commissioned by Eisenberg, the painting shows members of the 19th Bomb Group at Clark Field, in late November 1941.
Years later, while reading The Legend of Colin Kelly, a book published by Stan Cohen, Eisenberg discovered that Kelly’s wife had lived in Brooklyn, with her mother, after her husband had died. Eisenberg learned that Kelly’s wife bore the maiden name “Wicks” and that it had been she whom he had met many years before. Intrigued, Eisenberg contacted Cohen, who put him in touch with Kelly’s surviving crewmen and other living relatives.

Their response set in motion an art project that would preserve the story of Kelly’s courage and sacrifice. He then commissioned famed aviation artist Gil Cohen, of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to capture a snapshot in oil of Kelly’s crew hurriedly racing to board their B-17 before a Japanese air raid on Clark Field in the Philippines. The final product is a dramatic seven-foot wide panorama entitled In Alis Vincimus, which is Latin for “On Wings We Conquer.” Unveiled on July 18, 1998, In Alis Vincimus was the first painting that Eisenberg commissioned and marked the start of his reputation as the world’s premier aviation art patron and collector.

Today, at least 125 original paintings hang in Eisenberg’s gallery, each representing unique, dramatic “snapshots’ of men and machines in a time of desperate warfare. A part of Eisenberg relives those times, every hour of every day, as he is surrounded by his painting collection. While each “snapshot in oil” possesses aesthetic beauty and historical accuracy, perhaps the most significant aspect of each work has not been painted by an artist, but with the marker stroke of the World War II veteran participants in the artists’ scenes. For example, Eisenberg’s Tokyo Raiders, a painting by the great British artist, Robert Taylor, bears the signature of General Jimmy Doolittle, the late Medal of Honor recipient and leader of the Tokyo Raiders. Eisenberg explained that when veterans affix their signatures to the back of a painting, they affirm the accuracy and add authenticity to the historical snapshot. Tokyo Raiders is one of ninety-two works by Taylor that Eisenberg owns and displays in his private gallery.

America, some have said, has become a society “governed by pictures.” Today’s generations, in particular, have grown up in a visual culture where images have become as valuable as pages in a book. Thanks to his enthusiastic patronage of the aviation genre, Eisenberg has enabled artists to preserve America’s historically significant pictures and that of our Allies before the first-hand memories of such scenes are gone forever.

Above: Eisenberg relates the story of Colin Kelly, as depicted in his Gil Cohen painting, "In Alis Vincimus." Aside from their obvious value as works of fine art, Eisenberg's paintings have become historical documents, as each has been signed on the reverse side by the veterans depicted in each scene.