Louis Weiner

Louis Weiner (1892-1967) came to Chicago from Ukraine along with many other East European Jews in the early 20th C.

The above depiction of a slow day on Maxwell Street is included in "Chicago and the Art of Migration" now showing at the Art Institute.

It was his contribution to the Biro-Bidjan portfolio of 1937 - celebrating that remote corner of the Soviet Union, on the Chinese border, where Stalin had once planned to relocate Russian Jews.

The entire portfolio is now in the collection of Oakton Community College.



He is quoted as saying:

I avoid the introduction into my work of national, racial, or religious elements for their own sake. I believe that art is universal and makes use of elements, emotions, and phenomena which are in their essence the same the world over and in all time.