Weber, Vincent

Painter, graphic artist, art teacher

Born: 16.11.1902 in Montjoie (from 1918 Monschau)

died: 06.03.1990 in Frankfurt am Main

Weber received his training from 1920-23 under Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger and Wassily Kandinsky at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar. In 1924, he became a master student of Adolf Hoelzel in Stuttgart and his assistant in 1929/30. In 1923, Weber traveled to Rome for the first time, where he made the acquaintance of fellow artists from the Matisse circle in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Paris. He was a member of the Novembergruppe and the Rheinische Sezession. In 1931, he received a scholarship for a trip to East Asia, during which he exhibited his watercolors at Tsing Hua University in Beijing.

After the National Socialists removed his paintings from the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, he sought a way out at the "Werkschule für gestaltende Arbeit" in Stettin in 1934. As the harassment increased, he took up a guest professorship in Rome. His war service as a military interpreter entangled him in the course of time. He escaped American captivity on foot from Lake Garda to Rome, where he headed the section for Christian Art at the San Paolo fuori le Mura Academy until 1952. He applied to head the painting department at the Werkkunstschule Wiesbaden, where he was director from 1954-65.

Under his aegis, this institute achieved a unique reputation. As an artist, he was already inspired by the Mediterranean light and its vibrant colors in the 1920s. He intoned the idealized landscape in a variety of major and minor tones. He created contours around the rhythmic fields of colour: this banding, which goes back to the leaded edging of stained glass windows (one of Weber's mosaics can be found in Frauenstein's mourning hall), connects and separates the valeurs and is associated with a crystalline wealth of forms. Weber continued the series of collages that were once influenced by Henri Matisse's colorful silhouettes. He also created oil pastels based on new travel experiences with verve right into old age.