Untitled 1956

Max Weber made this painting with a muted palette, somewhere between abstraction and representation, maybe during the middle of the 20th century. Looking at it, I start to imagine the scene. It looks like an artist studio. I wonder what it was like to be Weber making this painting? What’s he thinking about as he’s putting the paint down? I bet he was inspired by the cubists. He also knew his Cezanne, you can see it in the colour palette and brushstrokes! See the heavy outlines around some of the figures? They remind me of Philip Guston, except Guston’s colours were way more acidic. And those lines create an interesting tension between the forms and the space around them. This painting is a great reminder that artists are always in conversation, borrowing and riffing off each other's ideas. And maybe this is why painting is still so alive, because there is always room for interpretation!