Romy Weber

The artist Romy Weber (born 1936 in Regensburg, Germany) is a trained graphic designer who creates assemblages, collages, and objects. She removes found and everyday articles from their original function and places them in new and imaginative contexts, often giving them humorous titles. As a result, they have a poetic, sometimes ironic touch. She collects all sorts of things: from rotten and weathered objects, to rocks, wood, or worn-out and no longer usable materials. These objects are mounted on intensely colored picture grounds, creating a fanciful interplay between figure and shadow that can range from the humorous to the surreal. One such work is a series of collages on hand-made paper, while a second shows a small, chewed on grape stem transformed into a fig tree in the southern sun. Yet another presentation reveals a hoe on a piece of wood resembling the body of a mother goddess. Finally, in another series of monotypes, the artist was guided by a sensibility for the structural qualities of various materials.
Romy Weber’s playful approach to materials also spills over into her paintings, particularly as she paints on canvas as well as wood. Regarding the latter, for example, she composed square forms with iridescent, silvery centers painted on more or less treated, blue-primed wood.
For her large-format oil paintings, she uses several layers of paint, the structure of which serves as a compositional element. Because she regards color as the most important artistic material, she applies the paint in several layers with a palette knife to create animated structures and extremely nuanced color effects. She also often scrapes away part of the top layer, letting the colors beneath shine through.

Romy Weber has been working as a team with Ruth Pfalzberger for over 40 years. Both artists studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel and have worked as graphic designers for many years: Romy Weber as a teacher of typography and design at the Malerfachschule in Lahr, and Ruth Pfalzberger at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the University of Basel. Both artists have a pronounced feel for material, form, and color, great technical precision, and a sense for drawing inspiration from nature. In the course of many years, they have created autonomous works that often communicate with each other, but also stand their ground as individual artworks. Since their first joint exhibition in 1972 at Schloss Thunstetten, they have presented their work together in regular intervals – alongside many solo and group exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad.

Dominique von Burg