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By Stefene Russell
Photograph by Martin Schweig
In the late ’50s, when Gaslight Square heated up to full boil (espresso machines hissing at the Laughing Buddha, free jazz floating from the Dark Side), St. Louis was added to the firmament of beatnik hip. But there were no galleries—not ones showing local modern art, at least—with the exception of the Schweig Gallery. As a young man, Martin Schweig Jr., third in four generations of portrait photographers, opened the gallery in the basement of the family photo studio, showing work by brilliant artists on the Wash. U. faculty, Max Beckmann and Siegfried Reinhardt among them. When he shuttered the gallery in 1989, he’d shown work by nearly four generations of local artists.
“We had a show of Max Beckmann’s drawings and paintings … Arthur Osver … all of these artists,” Schweig says. “I’d like to think it was because our gallery was so wonderful,” he adds with a chuckle, “but there wasn’t too much else at the time.”
That self-effacing humor is one of the reasons photographer Michael Eastman quips that “in a dictionary under ‘mensch’ there’s a picture of Martin Schweig.” Eastman had his first big solo show at the Schweig Gallery; so did his friend Sam Stang (formerly of the cult glassware collective IBEX). Both rave about Schweig’s generosity in mentoring young artists. They also speak highly of Schweig’s own work, which is why they’re co-curating a Schweig retrospective, 70 Years of Photography, which opens this month at the May Gallery.
Of the 60-or-so photographs, a few will be shots from Schweig Studios, which was founded in 1893 by Martin’s grandfather Morris and was still in operation under the eye of Martin Schweig III until 2002.
The earliest photograph in the exhibit is a picture of geese at the zoo. It has all the hallmarks of Schweig’s later work—an intense focus on texture and form, an animal as subject—and was taken when Schweig was 12. The show is organized around loose themes—animals, landscapes, travel, architecture, portraits—but Schweig’s body of work is almost too eclectic to caption and more ticklish to the solar plexus than those genres would suggest. Even the scenes he reshoots have a surprising and fresh quality to them, including one of the more recent photographs in the show, an image of a Greco-Roman ruin that’s a variation on a photograph Schweig had taken several years before.
“It’s amazing, because no matter what you do for a living, after you’re finished with it, it’s pretty difficult to still want to do it,” Eastman says, “and he still loves making photographs.”
Martin Schweig: 70 Years of Photography (February 23–March 30). Free.
Times: 9 a.m.–9 p.m. Mon–Fri, noon–5 p.m. Sat & Sun. May Gallery,
8300 Big Bend, 314-961-2660, webster.edu/maygallery.
