For Antoine Helwaser, as lucrative as art is, it’s a two-dimensional adventure, while connecting back to his Jewish heritage has been a multi-layered deep dive

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab

You could almost miss the door to Antoine Helwaser’s gallery on Madison Avenue and 69th Street, wedged between boutiques so exclusive that only a few exquisitely crafted, carefully curated dresses and handbags are displayed in the windows. But behind the black-painted door, up three flights of old staircase, one enters a brightly lit, starkly modern white space that is the Helwaser Gallery.

It’s not large, only a reception desk and a couple of large rooms currently hung with the colorful geometric paintings of emerging artist Anton Ginzburg. Only the tall, wrought-iron-framed windows leading to a tiny balcony suggest the prewar origins of the building. (We’re led in by Mr. Helwaser’s daughter Clara and her husband of ten months, Yaakov Mens, who has been helping his father-in-law with marketing and publicity. Both of them pursued advanced studies at Cambridge, and Yaakov is still associated with the Middle East and North African Forum (MENAF), a foreign policy think tank affiliated with the university.)

Mr. Helwaser now emerges to greet us, dressed with casual Parisian elegance in a dark blazer, sweater, and black yarmulke. About 13 years ago, he and his wife, Anne-Marie, moved their family from Paris to New York. Mr. Helwaser’s manner is welcoming yet circumspect, a combination perhaps of European reserve and native modesty.

Like analyzing a complex painting, it will take some time to uncover the layers, and there are many; it will turn out that Mr. Helwaser is very much a Renaissance man, an international art expert who has studied philosophy and psychology; a jazz pianist; a child of Holocaust survivors; and a Jew who elected to embrace his faith after a childhood during which it was vigorously suppressed.