Great Masters

Weber came from Poland to the U.S at ten and studied painting at the Pratt Institute of Brooklyn where he worked under Arthur Wesley Dow who had been close to Gauguin.

He arrived in Paris 1905 and worked at the Grande Chaumire Studio and at the Acadmie Colarossi. Discovering Fauvism and Cubism he befriended the Douanier Rousseau, Matisse and Picasso. he organised the Galerie 291 exhibition in 1910 where he was the first to show works of the Douanier Rousseau in the U.S.

In the meantime he had returned to New York in 1908 where he became a master of the U.S school of painting with Bruce, Stuart Davis, MacDonald Wright, Georgia OKeefe, John Marin, Charles Demuth, L. Feyninger and Frank Hopper who were the leaders of a new movement until at least 1945.

Weber took part in many group exhibitions in Paris and in New York and had two solo shows in 1909 and 1911 that caused some scandal. Painting in an Expressionist style with some Cubist borrowings he seemed much close to the German Die Brucke movement as his works were reminiscent of those of Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff and Vlaminck.

From 1912 and until 1917 his works were impregnated with a Futurist-Cubist touch often nearing abstraction such as in New York at Night of 1915.

After 1917 Weber returned to Expressionism with Cubist lines and found a way of expressing his lyrical temper.

Weber painted some abstract works around 1945 with buoyant and tormented forms on monochrome backgrounds. It was with such works as The Fugitives or Hassidic Dance that he was awarded a distinction by the Carnegie Prize Organisation.