La Cienega

A show of paintings, drawings, watercolors and sculptures by American modernist Max Weber (1881-1961) samples the artist’s output between 1908 to 1932. Of Russian lineage, steeped in the early European avant-garde, Weber was an eclectic chameleon able to recognize good formulas when he saw them, facile enough to absorb each at will.

The show offers numerous charming if borrowed still lifes that have the tipped tables and faceted fruit of Cezanne. You can’t find fault with the poetry of “The Gesture” from 1921 even though you know it quotes heavily from Picasso in the ‘20s. It’s no accident that Futurism debuted around 1909 and that Weber’s tiny, impressive ink drawing, “Two Sleepers,” dated 1912, uses all the energetic linearity of that school.

Weber deserves a spot as one who broke the ice that held American art in deep freeze in the early 1900s. Beyond that, Weber was a talented paraphraser who softened the bite of primitivism, cubism and expressionism with a warm romantic air best illustrated in the fine painting “Interior Still Life” from 1932. A group of tiny doodled sculptures shows Weber at his least derivative and most charming. (Feingarten Galleries, 8380 Melrose Ave., extended to June 15.)