American Art Collaborative

Weber was in Paris from 1905 to 1908, soaking up the artistic styles of Picasso, Matisse, and Cezanne. In the galleries and at Gertrude Stein's evening salons, the avant-garde writers and painters of the day enjoyed far greater recognition than America's conservative establishment could offer. Weber came back to the States convinced that his personal, expressive art was as important as the work of the academic painters who dominated the market. He and a handful of New York painters staged modest exhibitions that helped pave the way for the great Armory Show of 1913. For Summer he borrowed the poses of prostitutes in Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and ideas from Freud's psycho-sexual theories to create an image of women as elemental forces of nature.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006