Portrait

1919–20

Portrait, 1919–20. Max Weber (American, 1881–1961). Color woodcut on Chinese paper; image: 10.5 x 4.7 cm (4 1/8 x 1 7/8 in.); sheet: 23.6 x 15.9 cm (9 5/16 x 6 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of James and Hanna Bartlett 2018.1072 The American artist Max Weber was deeply influenced by non-Western art, including African masks that he viewed at Parisian museums and Japanese prints, which he learned about as a student. Around 1919, he began to combine these interests in a series of relief prints, such as the one seen here. Weber deconstructed the human figure into component parts, emphasizing its simplicity and geometry. This print was reproduced as an illustration for a short story published in a 1922 issue of the avant-garde journal Broom.