August 2017
Nashville Icon Anton Weiss and His Artworks
now at Haynes Galleries
FRANKLIN— Haynes Galleries is pleased to now present the work of a Nashville art icon, Anton Weiss. An abstract expressionist of great merit, Weiss has created over the course of his career both paintings and sculptures that capture emotion and the act of creating. Haynes Galleries exclusively presents the work of the Anton Weiss Trust, the artist’s personal collection of his own artwork. Many of Weiss’s pieces are included in the current exhibition at Haynes Galleries, “ArtNashville.”
Weiss has given so much to the arts community in Nashville but now he needs the community’s assistance. A few years ago Weiss was unfortunately diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The devastating effects of the disease have required specialized medical care which will need to continue indefinitely. With the sale of every Anton Weiss paintings and sculpture at “ArtNashville” a portion of the sale is going directly to a fund for Weiss’s care. A GoFundMe account has also been established to directly raise funds.
Anton Weiss’s work encompasses the best of Abstract Expressionism’s non- representational energy and chaos. Each work is a personal statement imbued with Weiss’s mindset as he made it. But Weiss also strove to make each piece a form of communication between him and the viewer.
Weiss’s story is a dramatic but inspiring one. Born in Austria to artist parents, Weiss had a mixed upbringing. His early life was idyllic with trips to the family’s winery and learning about painting from his parents. His childhood was interrupted by the onset of World War II and his family was separated from one another. Following the war Weiss and his mother were forced into a Russian-led concentration camp for three years. They both ultimately escaped and Weiss’s life returned to somewhat normalcy before they were relocated by a charity to Nashville where he spent the rest of his adolescence.
In 1956, Weiss moved to New York to studying painting during what is now know as the critical post-War era. He enrolled in the legendary Art Students League in New York but soon left the school when he found the school’s traditional approach to art to be restrictive and stifling. Weiss instead took courses with Hans Hofmann, acclaimed instructor and one of the first notable Abstract Expressionists. Learning from Hofmann exposed him to newer thought processes and a different way to execute a painting. Weiss quickly took to this new approach.
In 1960 Weiss returned to Nashville and was pleasantly surprised by the warm reception to both him and his art. In the years that followed he became a local arts influencer. His works hang in homes and businesses around town. In addition to creating his own significant artwork, Weiss helped establish the Tennessee Art League as well as the Tennessee Watercolor Society. He also became a professor at Watkins College of Art and Design and later became head of the art department.
The Anton Weiss Trust, the artist’s personal collection of his own work, is filled with artwork rarely exhibited, if ever shown at all. These artworks are expressive, filled with motion, and bursting with color. Their inclusion in “ArtNashville” add a vital and significant portion of Nashville’s visual arts history to the exhibition. Their inclusion also honors the man that brought one of the 20th century’s greatest styles to town.