They are young, dynamic, and always busy: the (mainly women) characters in Grace Weaver’s work feel very familiar. In mostly saturated colours and with sweeping lines, the U.S. artist paints and draws everyday scenes from a female urban cosmos. Neues Museum is showing around twenty of her works from the Stadler Collection, offering an overview of her output since 2019.
Symbols of a young, modern world
Her works tell stories of friendship and attachment, depicting young people engaged in sporting activities, partying, or shopping. She shows people communicating by smartphone or while driving together. When the artist focusses attention on a single figure, she is interested in everyday rituals or moments of concentration and inspection. The young women with long hair, a recurring motif, spend much time on self-care, wear pretty dresses, and are obviously full of self-confidence, making them symbols of a modern urban world. They are not without worries or problems, however. Most of them actually have rather serious or strained looks on their faces, and the pictures are open-ended in terms of how the situation might develop.
Dynamic style
Weaver’s works are constructed in two-dimensions, her bodies cubist in build. Drawing and painting being equally important to her, the show includes not only oil paintings but also watercolours, gouaches and charcoal drawings. In the latter, the dynamism of the scene is further heightened by overpainting and blurring. In 2021, she changed her technique, moving away from clear outlines and using more dark and blended colours. In spite of this, her figures remain recognizable. There are also clear references to art history, including Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger, but also Pablo Picasso.
New York and Germany
Grace Weaver was born in 1989 in Vermont, USA, and now lives in New York. In Germany she has had solo museum exhibitions in Oldenburg and Erlangen (2019) and in Reutlingen (2017). The Stadler Collection, which loaned all of the works on show here, holds a large number of works from all phases of the artist’s production to date.
Many thanks to the Stadler Collection for loaning the works in this show!