Yakov Yakovlevich Weber was an Honored Art Worker of the Republic of Volga Germans, a landscape painter, academic artist and pedagogue.
The main theme in the artist’s work is the great Russian river Volga. Having chosen the career of a landscape painter while still studying at the Imperial Academy of Arts, Yakov Weber remained faithful to his calling throughout his life, preserving and developing the traditions of classical Russian landscape painting, despite all the challenges and hardships. Yakov Weber confessed in his autobiography, “I have never really had to think about what I will do in the future, nor did anyone ask me about it, as if they knew it was a settled question… Art, which chose me to serve it, offered me nothing but pure happiness…“.
The biography of the artist fully reflected the
fate of all Russian Germans. Having been prosecuted in 1937 on false charges
and having endured the hard years of exile, Weber never managed to return to
full-fledged work. Many of the artist’s paintings were irretrievably lost, and
his work was long forgotten and little studied. The first solo exhibition of
Yakov Weber took place after the artist’s death and later became the basis for
the permanent exhibition “Yakov Weber. Singer of the Volga” of the Engels
Museum of Local Lore.
Exhibits are marked with AR stickers for identification purposes.
