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Artist: Max Weber

Schoelkopf Gallery presents Max Weber: Art and Life Are Not Apart, an exhibition of 26 paintings and works on paper by Max Weber directly from the Max Weber Foundation. The exhibition spans the full scope of the artist's career-long still life practice from 1907 to 1955.

Informed by Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso, Weber's still lifes occupy a pivotal position between the European avant-garde and American modernism. The exhibition, which encompasses a variety of materials including oil, gold leaf collage, pastel, gouache and watercolor, investigates Weber’s important contributions and reactions to a range of twentieth-century movements such as Cubism, Fauvism and Surrealism. In 1916, Weber claimed that “art and life are not apart,” positioning himself within a modernist tradition of painting quotidian life from lively Impressionist café scenes to hard-edge Pop depictions of mass-produced items. Weber distinguished himself through his deep belief that objects exist as symbols of culture and civilization and should be measured by their usefulness, spirituality, and intellect.

In Fall 2023, Schoelkopf Gallery announced the exclusive worldwide representation of the Max Weber Foundation. Max Weber: Art and Life Are Not Apart will be the first exhibition Schoelkopf Gallery presents following this news, and the gallery will continue to share the artist's transformative journey and lasting contributions to the development of 20th century modernism through future exhibitions and programming.

About Max Weber

Max Weber, a Russian-born American painter, is celebrated as a pioneering modernist who profoundly influenced the trajectory of American art in the early 20th century. Through his experimentations in Cubism, Expressionism, and Fauvism in the first decades of the twentieth century, Weber transformed what had previously been regarded as movements unique to Europe’s avant-garde into a style reflective of America’s growing cultural prominence on the world stage. After immigrating to Brooklyn from what was then part of the Russian Empire, Weber attended the Pratt Institute of Art before studying at the prestigious Académie Julian in Paris. There, Weber spent time in Henri Matisse's studio, an experience that deeply informed his artistic vision. After returning to New York in 1909, he taught at the Art Students League and exhibited at the Newark Museum, the Jewish Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Weber’s oeuvre spans styles and genres, demonstrating his intense interest and awareness of contemporary developments in abstraction. While most known for his paintings on canvas, Weber was a prolific artist who practiced in various media, including sculpture, collage, and prints. Weber’s formal dynamism and broad stylistic scope inspired subsequent generations of abstract artists, including his student, Mark Rothko. Since his death in 1961, Weber’s artistic contributions have been assessed by art historians as indispensable to the promotion of abstraction to American audiences, including their acceptance of the genre. Weber’s works are represented in major collections throughout the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Detroit Institute of Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Spain.