Max Weber

Born in Białystok, Max Weber was a pioneer of visual modernism in the United States. His family settled in Brooklyn when he was ten. Weber studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1898 to 1900. After teaching at public schools in Virginia and Minnesota, he moved to Paris in 1905 and immersed himself in modernist art circles. Weber returned to New York in 1909 and introduced cubism to America. Although the initial critical response to his paintings was hostile, a positive appreciation emerged over time. After World War I, his style became less avant-garde and more representational. In 1930, the Museum of Modern Art honored him with a retrospective of his work, the first solo exhibition of an American artist at the museum.