Poet John Keats wrote "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," then died of tuberculosis at 25 in 1821, leaving critics to argue the meaning of that particular verse.

Keats must have been thinking about art, for the beauty found in a painting is pure truth, perhaps revealing some purposeful meaning that explains life better.

Oakland's George Krevsky owns a San Francisco art gallery. He, too, suggests Keats was honoring art with his five-word gem.

"Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder — it's so personal," said Krevsky. "We're talking about the authenticity of that experience, which is truth."

Krevsky has discovered an artistic truth of his own, that the country's worst economic downturn since the Depression hasn't damaged the art world. People love art regardless of affluent or impoverished times.

"People are more sophisticated about art," Krevsky said Thursday. "They know more about it, and they know more about its market because the Internet has made things more transparent. The technology has made things move faster."

The George Krevsky Galley at 77 Geary St., which opened in 1992, hit its financial nadir in 2008 but has recovered because of the Internet.

"We were closed in August for the first time since I opened in '92," Krevsky said. "Business had been bad from October 2008 until then. The phone wasn't ringing. Collectors were frightened. It was by appointment only in August

"There's still a yearning for art. Young galleries are opening up in Oakland and San Francisco. There's still a future for it."

Krevsky, 69, is an art dealer without ever having been an art prodigy. He doesn't even paint. But a light went on — a truth — during an 8 a.m. art and architectural history class he took as a Penn State freshman. His professor, Albert Christ-Janner, showed slides of the French caves of Lascaux, Picasso's cubism and the works of U.S. painter Robert Rauschenberg.

"Everyone in the class was falling asleep, but this guy turned me on to art," Krevsky recalled.

But he was "drifting," so after college he spent 15 years doing social work, first in Fort Worth, Texas, where he discovered more truth in the person of Henry Hopkins, director of the Fort Worth Art Center,and later director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Put in charge of a Forth Worth Art Center fundraiser, Krevsky was lost concerning how to display the Rembrandts and Chagalls in the exhibit. And he couldn't make himself appreciate abstract art.

"Henry took me on a walk-through," he said. "He knew I loved jazz and classical music, so he said, 'Look at the painting like it's music, what's going on between the colors, between the spaces.' It was like opening up a whole new world to me."

Krevsky moved to Nashville, then New York, getting more into art and receiving sage advice from such well-known art dealers as Leo Castelli, who discovered Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and the whole Pop Art movement.

Krevsky went to San Francisco in the late 1970s. He worked at a Union Street gallery, then managed a number of galleries before dealing art out of his Oakland home. His desire to have a gallery of 20th century art was delayed by the Oakland fire that hit his house, forcing him to rebuild.

Krevsky's vision of owning his own gallery finally came true in '92. His dedication to 20th century art continues Nov. 5 when 90-year-old writer-painter-former beatnik Lawrence Ferlinghetti's surrealistic art, featuring the human form, begins a six-week run at Krevsky's gallery.

"It's figurative. It's realism. It tells a story," Krevsky said of his art preferences.

Or as Keats also wrote, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

Art has that sublime, but truthful, effect.

Know any Good Neighbors? Phone 510-208-6466 or e-mail dnewhouse@bayareanewsgroup.com.