Max Weber finished the Boys High School of Brooklyn in 1898.
College/University
Gallery of Max Weber
31 Rue du Dragon, 75006 Paris, France
Max Weber studied at the Academie Julian at the beginning of 1900s.
Gallery of Max Weber
14 Rue de la Grande Chaumière, 75006 Paris, France
Max Weber studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière at the beginning of 1900s.
Gallery of Max Weber
200 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11205, United States
Max Weber studied at Pratt Institute from 1898 to 1900.
Career
Gallery of Max Weber
49 Washington St, Newark, NJ 07102, United States
Max Weber had a solo show at the Newark Museum in 1913.
Gallery of Max Weber
1914
Max Weber with his colleagues and students at the Clarence H. White
School of Photography (standing in the second row, second from the right hand on rail).
Gallery of Max Weber
215 W 57th St, New York, NY 10019, United States
Max Weber taught at the Art Students League from 1919 to 1921 and from 1926 to 1927.
Gallery of Max Weber
11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, United States
Max Weber had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1930.
Gallery of Max Weber
111 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603, United States
Max Weber exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1941.
Gallery of Max Weber
10 Art Museum Dr, Baltimore, MD 21218, United States
Max Weber exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1942.
Gallery of Max Weber
99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014, United States
A large retrospective of Max Weber was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1949.
Achievements
A painting by Weber ‘New York’ purchased at Christie's in New York City for $1,925,000 in 2016.
Max Weber with his colleagues and students at the Clarence H. White
School of Photography (standing in the second row, second from the right hand on rail).
Max Weber was a Jewish-born American artist, printmaker and sculptor who represented Cubism. His abstract canvases were also influenced by such styles as Fauvism, Futurism, Orphism and Postimpressionism.
Later in his career, the artist used Jewish topics as the main subjects of his art.
Background
Max Weber was born on April 18, 1881, in Białystok, Russian Empire (currently the city is on the territory of Poland). He came from a poor Jewish family of Morris Weber, a tailor, and Julia Getz.
When Max was ten, the family relocated to Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
Education
Max Weber received his general education at Boys High School of Brooklyn which he finished in 1898.
The same year, he entered the Pratt Institute in New York City where he obtained the first artistic training from Arthur Wesley Dow who encouraged his pupils to deny the traditional painting style and to experiment in search of new methods of expression. Weber graduated in 1900.
Five years later, the young artist went to Paris where he pursued his studies at the Académie Julian, the Académie Colarossi and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He discovered the art of Paul Cézanne and met the modernist painters of the time, among whom were Henri Rousseau, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. The latter gave Weber some lessons.
In 1957, Max Weber obtained the Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree from Brandeis University.
Max Weber career started from teaching activity. To earn his living after graduating from Pratt Institute in 1900, the young artist gave drawing and painting lessons at public schools in Virginia, Minnesota and Michigan. Within five years, he accumulated the sum which allowed him to travel to Paris.
In the capital of France, Weber quickly associated with the avant-garde circles and got acquainted with many representatives of modernism, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Delaunay, Leo and Gertrude Stein, and others.
On his return to the United States in 1909, he began to introduce the avant-garde knowledge he had received in Paris to the artistic life of New York City. The works he presented at his first exhibitions at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 gallery in 1910 and in 1911 were strongly criticized by art experts. Although, since that time, Weber had created many of his most famous paintings, such as The Geranium and Chinese Restaurant. The artist depicted city architecture with its skyscrapers and interiors in a Cubist manner. The important solo show of Weber’s work at the Newark Museum of Art became the first exhibition featuring the art of modernism in America.
A year later, Max Weber debuted as an author publishing in London his poetry collection called ‘Cubist Poems’. Some of his essays were also featured in Stieglitz's journal Camera Work the following years. The same time, Weber returned to his teaching activity teaching art history at the Clarence White School of Photography in New York City. He spent at the institution four years. By this time, his art became more representational. Then, Weber transferred to the Art Students League where he gave lessons from 1919 to 1921 and 1926 to 1927. The second poetry collection titled ‘Primitives: Poems and Woodcuts’ was published this time.
By the 1930s, the number of admirers of Max Weber’s art increased that led to more invitations from art dealers. So, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., was so impressed by Weber’s art that he provided the painter with a solo exhibition at the Museum in 1930. Seven years later, Weber presided the American Artists’ Congress.
The popularity of Weber attended its peak the next decade due to his paintings paying homage to his Jewish origins. At the end of his life, the canvases provided the artist with many prestigious awards and exhibitions around the United States, including the shows at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1941, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Carnegie Institute the couple of following years. In 1949, a large retrospective was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The last major retrospectives of the artist while alive were organized in Pratt Institute and the Newark Museum of Art in 1959.
Quotations:
"Art has a higher purpose than mere imitation of nature. It transcends the earthly and measurable. It has its own scale and destine. It is concerned with informing spirit that emanates only from spiritual and mystical realms, from the nether and the astral. A work may be ever so anatomically incorrect or 'distorted' and still be endowed with the miraculous and indescribable elements of beauty that thrill the discerning spectator."
"The basis of any art is simple, natural, spontaneous sensation."
Membership
Brooklyn Institute of Art and Sciences
,
United States
American Academy of Arts and Letters
,
United States
1955
Interests
Artists
Paul Cézanne, Henri Rousseau
Connections
Max Weber married Frances Abrams on June 27, 1916. The family produced a son named Maynard and a daughter Joy.
Max Weber: An American Cubist in Paris and London, 1905-15
A series of fascinating illustrated essays explore Weber's connections to Matisse, Picasso and Henri Rousseau as well as the artistic and personal relationship between the artist and photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn