Untitled 1956

Max Weber made this ‘Untitled’ painting in 1956 using gouache and pastel on paper. The loose, gestural marks and muted color palette give the piece a sense of immediacy, like Weber was thinking through the image as he made it. There's something really interesting about how the colors work here. They’re not quite opaque, not quite transparent, but somewhere in between. It gives the piece a kind of hazy, dreamlike quality. See how the artist lets the colors mix and mingle, creating these unexpected combinations. The black line against the grey ground makes the image pulsate. There's a real sense of depth and space, even though it’s all happening on a flat surface. Weber was interested in Cubism, but his work is a lot more expressive and emotional than some of those early Cubist paintings. You can see that influence in other artists like Marsden Hartley, who also brought an emotional sensibility to early modernism in America. Art is always a conversation, right? It's about taking what you've learned and making it your own.