For over half a century, Patricia G. Ross Weis and Robert F. Weis built a collection of 20th-century art not for spectacle, but for themselves. Their approach was quiet, deliberate, and deeply personal, resulting in an assembly of works that charts the course of modernism through its most pivotal figures—among them Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, and Mark Rothko.
This November, Christie’s will present over 80 works from the Weis collection, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and ceramics. Eighteen key pieces will headline a dedicated single-owner sale, with the remaining works featured throughout the marquee week.
The collection was formed in the Weis’s homes in Pennsylvania and New York. Robert, chairman of the family-run Weis Markets Inc., applied the same meticulous attention to art that he gave to the grocery business. A lifelong learner who was rarely without a book, he believed there was “no substitute for looking.” In the days before the internet, he and Patricia dedicated their weekends to visiting New York galleries and taking vacations to museums in Europe, thereby developing their knowledge through direct experience.
Patricia’s keen judgment left a lasting mark on the collection. Her fascination with modern ceramics began in London, where she discovered the work of Lucie Rie and Hans Coper. Captivated by their inventive forms and distinctive glazes, she went on to assemble an essential group of their pieces. Highlights from this collection will be presented in Christie’s Design sale in New York in December 2025.
Though intensely private, the Weises were committed philanthropists, supporting educational, cultural, and medical institutions, including Bard College, Franklin & Marshall College, Yale University, and the Metropolitan Opera.
The collection itself reflects a sharp intellectual vision, connecting artistic movements across genres and geographies. An early Braque Fauvist landscape, La Ciotat (1907), demonstrates their eye for foundational works. The painting’s radical colour and flattened perspective set a precedent for the modernist journey that follows—through the fractured forms of Picasso, the surreal landscapes of Miró, and onward to the emotional colour fields of Rothko’s 1958 masterpiece, No. 31 (Yellow Stripe).
The result is not just an art historical collection, but an insight of the Weis’s own lives. In their homes, a work by a contemporary friend might be placed beside an acknowledged masterpiece, each chosen for the dialogue it created. Kept private for decades, the collection now emerges, revealing a legacy shaped more by a profound and enduring conversation with art than by possession.
Top Photo: The Weis residence, Pennsylvania. Photograph by Vivian Marie Doering. © 2025 Vivian Marie Doering, Courtesy Christie’s
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