Back in the Day
Anton Weiss Retrospective at Bennett Galleries
On May 16 from 6 to 8 PM Bennett Galleries is opening their retrospective exhibition on the life and works of Anton Weiss. The exhibition will feature a number of his works including works unseen by the public as well as artwork by six talented local artists he mentored. The opening reception will also feature live music by Randy Perkins and light refreshments. Bennett Galleries requests that you come ready to enjoy an unforgettable evening of art, music, and community. Below is a feature on the artist and his work, a worthwhile read on the way to the show!
Anton Weiss (1936-2019)
For more than half a century, Anton Weiss shaped the visual identity of Middle Tennessee through a body of work that bridged European modernism and the evolving cultural landscape of the American South. His career, spanning from the postwar art world of New York to decades of artistic leadership in Nashville, reflects a lifelong commitment to experimentation, material exploration, and arts education.
The Life
Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1936, but of Austrian descent, Weiss discovered his artistic calling at an early age, inspired by childhood exposure to the legacy of Renaissance masters, especially Michelangelo. He received formal training at the Villach Institute of Art and Museums in Austria and, during World War II he spent two years in a concentration camp before escaping. In the 1950s he immigrated to the United States. In 1956, he entered the vibrant New York art scene, enrolling at the Art Students League of New York and later studying under the influential Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann, whose emphasis on color theory and spatial dynamics would leave a lasting imprint on Weiss’s visual language. The impact that Hofmann’s abstractions had on Weiss would last throughout his life. In 2002 he characterized the abstract approach as “…the complete reversal of objective art, where you get the emotions from concrete images, […] In abstract art, the artist transmits emotions directly to viewer.” (Nashville Scene, October 31, 2002)
In 1960, Weiss relocated to Nashville, where his career entered a defining phase. Over the following decades, he became a central figure in the artistic world of Middle Tennessee, working across media that included painting, watercolor, wood, and mixed materials. His signature works—often sculptural in nature—frequently employed metals such as copper, aluminum, and bronze, creating elongated, architectonic forms that suggested movement, growth, and organic evolution.
Beyond his personal studio practice, Weiss made a lasting institutional impact. From 1975 to 1980, he served as director of the art department at Watkins College of Art (where he once studied), helping shape generations of artists and designers. He also played an instrumental role in the formation of regional arts organizations, including the Tennessee Art League and the Tennessee Watercolor Society, strengthening the infrastructure for artists working across the state.
Weiss’s works entered numerous public and corporate collections across North America, demonstrating both regional influence and national reach. His pieces have been collected by institutions such as the Tennessee State Museum, as well as major corporate collections including Federal Express and Canadian National Railway, underscoring the broad appeal of his sculptural and painterly language.
Late-career retrospectives, including exhibitions such as Reaching for Infinity, highlighted the remarkable continuity of Weiss’s artistic vision from the 1970s through the 21st century. These exhibitions revealed the depth of his experimentation with form and materials, presenting not only his celebrated metal sculptures but also watercolors and mixed-media works that demonstrated his restless curiosity and refusal to remain confined to a single medium.
Today, Anton Weiss’s legacy lies not only in the physical presence of his artworks but also in the institutions he helped build and the students he mentored. Steve Mabry, owner of Stanford Fine Art, has described Weiss as a “quintessentially American painter.” Lisa Fox, owner of the Leiper’s Creek Gallery and successful abstract artist in her own right described Weiss as “…an early supporter of [her] gallery […] and a foundational mentor [who] influenced her to apply classical training towards abstraction; using composition, color, and value to go deeper than surface and provoke a feeling.” (https://leiperscreekgallery.com/art/into-the-deep-by-lisa-fox) His career reflects a rare synthesis of artistic production, education, and civic engagement—one that helped define Nashville’s transition into a modern arts city while maintaining deep ties to the traditions of European modernism. Elizabeth Perkins, owner of Bennett Galleries fondly remembers Weis: “I knew Anton for over 20 years, and one of my favorite pieces in my personal collection is a sculpture that he gave me for Christmas. He was a true master of his craft and, in my opinion, the best abstract artist Nashville has ever seen. His acclaim was well-earned, and his work and teaching influenced many more artists (including some that we represent in our gallery), but he never let any of that go to his head. He was down-to-earth, a joy to be around, and I miss him.”
This May, Bennett Galleries Nashville is holding a special exhibition honoring Weiss’ life, work, and enduring influence. The exhibition will feature many of Weiss’ works, including previously unseen works as well as works of those he mentored, including Pat Snyder, Karen Johnston, Wanda Choate, Charlotte Terrell, Kris Prunitsch, and Lisa Jennings. The following is a description of a couple of works that will be available to view (and purchase) at the exhibition.
The Work
Among Weiss’s painted works, Aftermath stands as a particularly resonant example of his mature visual language. In this composition, Weiss confronts the tension between destruction and renewal, layering gestural marks and fractured forms into a surface that feels both unsettled and searching. The painting’s palette—often marked by scorched earth tones interrupted by flashes of brighter color—suggests a landscape altered by upheaval, whether natural, emotional, or historical. Weiss once remarked on the use of color: “I’m not saying art can’t be emotional with bright colors, but for me the emotional quality comes to the surface more with a subdued palette.” Like much of his work, Aftermath resists literal narrative, instead inviting viewers to contemplate cycles of rupture and rebuilding. The piece reflects Weiss’s European roots and lived memory of a continent shaped by war, while also aligning with the broader Abstract Expressionist ethos he absorbed during his studies in New York. In this way, Aftermath functions not only as an individual artwork but as a distillation of Weiss’s lifelong engagement with transformation, resilience, and the expressive potential of abstraction.
Another significant work, Dual Forces, from hammered steel and mixed media, exemplifies Weiss’s enduring fascination with tension, balance, and opposing energies. In this piece, contrasting shapes and directional lines appear to press against one another in the face of the steel, creating a sense of suddenly suspended movement. The work seems to explore the idea that growth emerges from conflict, visualizing that philosophy through a carefully orchestrated interplay of steel and intrusive metal scraps. The composition suggests not only physical opposition but psychological and philosophical dualities—order and chaos, restraint and release. As with much of Weiss’s work, the viewer is drawn into a dynamic visual dialogue, where resolution remains elusive and equilibrium is achieved through the coexistence of opposing elements, what Fredric Koeppell has called a “…rigorous and elegant air of urban and postindustrial decay.” (Commercial Appeal, April 11, 2013)
In Opposing Arches, Weiss returned to one of his most recognizable structural motifs: the arch as both architectural form and symbolic gesture. The work presents two curving elements set in visual tension, leaning toward and away from, and yet supporting one another in a relationship that feels at once confrontational and interdependent but nevertheless within a character of endurance and continuity. The negative space between the forms is as important as the material presence of the arches themselves, creating a charged interval that invites contemplation of distance, connection, and equilibrium. The work reflects Weiss’s mature sculptural thinking, where form, void, and movement are inseparable, and where opposing forces ultimately create a unified whole.
Unique to the exhibition at Bennett Galleries is Family without Faces, a previously unseen work that was contributed to the Bennett exhibition by Weiss’ widow. It is a remarkable abstract figurative painting in which Weiss’s personality and optimism seems to determine the expression. In the work, human forms seem to emerge from (or submerge into) a blurred background with more recognized images closer to the foreground and the more abstract in the back, as if apparent spirits or remembered people. From a painter who had survived, first hand, the horrors of World War Two, one might expect a darker or threatening depiction, but instead Weiss’s blue suggest an infinite, calm and mystical tone. The color is reminiscent of his teacher Hoffman, who might have described the blue as creating a “push and pull” between the textured strokes and the black and what areas of the work. Whether the figures be spirits or fond memories of ancestors is difficult to tell, but it is a beautiful painting from a man whose life was well lived.
Taken together, Aftermath, Dual Forces, Opposing Arches and Family without Faces illuminate the central concerns that defined Weiss’s mature artistic voice. Each work explores tension—between destruction and renewal, opposition and balance, mass and void—revealing his enduring fascination with the forces that shape both physical structures and human experience. Whether through fractured painterly surfaces or architectonic sculptural forms, Weiss consistently sought equilibrium within conflict, allowing opposing elements to generate movement and meaning. These works stand as compelling expressions of his lifelong engagement with transformation, resilience, and the search for harmony within dynamic, often unstable conditions. As with all great artists, the life lived will often merge with the ideas that are expressed, and Weiss’s work with the community as well as his work in the aesthetic place him as one of Nashville’s greatest masters. These works will not remain in the public long—don’t miss this opportunity to visit Bennett Galleries to see this history in person.
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Joseph E. Morgan is a father of two, husband, teacher and recovering guitarist in Middle Tennessee.
