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Study for Russian Ballet

Max Weber

American Art

The Russian-born American modernist Max Weber, who worked in a progressive, French-inspired mode of Cubist abstraction during the teens, employed preparatory works to explore compositional arrangements from which he would develop an abstract pictorial design. The intense sketchiness and exuberant expression of the figure subject in this watercolor demonstrate the artist’s dramatic departure from traditional figure styles of the late nineteenth century. His studies ultimately suggested to Weber broad patterns of light and dark and forces of dynamic movement, all of which he would translate into geometricized patterns of line and color. In the finished work, he remade the subject so dramatically that direct correspondences in form between study and final painting are difficult to identify.
MEDIUM Watercolor on laid paper
DATES 1914
DIMENSIONS 18 3/4 x 24 3/4in. (47.6 x 62.9cm) frame: 27 7/8 × 35 3/4 × 1 3/8 in. (70.8 × 90.8 × 3.5 cm)  (show scale)
SIGNATURE Signed lower right: "Max Weber 1914 / Russian Ballet"
COLLECTIONS American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 88.205
CREDIT LINE Gift of the Edith and Milton Lowenthal Foundation
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Max Weber (American, born Russia, 1881-1961). Study for Russian Ballet, 1914. Watercolor on laid paper, 18 3/4 x 24 3/4in. (47.6 x 62.9cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Edith and Milton Lowenthal Foundation, 88.205 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 88.205_SL1.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 88.205_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
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