Out of the mainstream. Henryk Weber – a Jewish art critic in interwar Cracow

Abstract

Henryk Weber, a painter and art critic of the interwar period, is today a completely, though inequitably, forgotten fi gure. He was mainly associated with the Jewish magazine „Nasz Wyraz” in which he ran a column devoted to the visual arts. He was particularly interested in the history of the artistic milieu of Cracow, including, though not exclusively, Jewish artists. As a painter he was close to the colorists, and in his reviews he turned out to be an insightful observer and interpreter, also open to the latest avant-garde art phenomena. His artistic concept grew out of the expressionist aesthetics, treating art as an expression of the artist’s feelings and emotions, but the act of creation meant for him submitting these impressions to the laws of a strict logical construction. Weber’s statements, especially reviews, are characterized by an extraordinary suggestiveness of the language, which is a specifi c combination of professional terminology and colloquialisms or terms borrowed from other disciplines or areas of life. Aesthetic and linguistic awareness, wide knowledge of the latest artistic phenomena as well as openness to new artistic trends make him one of the most outstanding critics of the interwar period in Poland.