George Morrison

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During his long career, George Morrison incorporated modern concepts and styles from many different artists and used them in unique ways. Look for these various artistic styles in Morrison’s paintings and sculpture:

George Morrison

Expressionism Artists painted recognizable subjects with bright colors and distorted shapes to convey intense emotions Look For: Figures or objects that have been painted with unnatural colors or strange shapes

“The horizon has been an obsession with me for most of my life. I think of it as the edge of the world.”

Organized by

Cubism Artists combined views of the same object from different angles into a single image on a flat surface Look For: Scenes that do not recede into space and pictures that are divided into sections or fragments Abstraction Artists painted from their imaginations and concentrated on the visual effects of color, shape, texture, and line Look For: Images that do not seem to depict anybody or anything from the real world Surrealism Artists looked to their subconscious for subjects and images, finding inspiration in dreams and accidental scribbles or doodles Look For: Floating dreamlike shapes, many layers of lines or brushstrokes, and unexpected combinations of things Abstract Expressionism Artists wanted to express deep emotional feelings without referring to anything beyond their materials and creative process Look For: Bold colors, thick paint, and clear traces of the painting process, like brushstrokes or tool marks

“I like the so-called magical surface of a painting, the marks a painter makes.”

George Morrison, 1976. Photo by Victor Bloomfield. Courtesy Hazel Belvo.

Born: September 30, 1919, the third of 12 children Where: At home in Chippewa City, a small Indian village near Grand Marais, Minnesota First language: Chippewa (Anishinaabemowin) First setback: An operation for tuberculosis of the hip when he was 11 and bed rest for the next eight months First artwork: Childhood sketches and wooden trinkets sold to tourists or traded with friends First career plan: To go to school and become a commercial artist First solo exhibition: Eighteen paintings in 1948 at the Grand Central Gallery in New York City First teaching position: In 1959 at the Minneapolis School of Art First Chippewa names: Wah-wah-ta-ganah-gah-boo (Standing in the Northern Lights) and Gwe-ki-ge-nah-gah-boo (Turning the Feather Around), given as part of a healing ceremony in 1986 for a rare lymph disease Died: April 17, 2000, at the age of 80 Where: Grand Portage, Minnesota Cover: Spirit Path, New Day, Red Rock Variation: Lake Superior Landscape (detail), 1990, acrylic and pastel on paper, 22 ½ × 30 1/ 8 inches. Collection Minnesota Museum of American Art.

Major Support from

Modern Spirit: The Art of George Morrison is organized by the Minnesota Museum of American Art and Arts Midwest, with the Plains Art Museum. The exhibition and its national tour are supported by corporate sponsor Ameriprise Financial and foundation sponsor Henry Luce Foundation. Major support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the generous contributions of individuals across the Midwest. This brochure is produced on occasion of the exhibition. Learn more at: www.mmaamorrison.org

Encounters with the Art World “Jumping from Minneapolis to New York and meeting those radical students like me, I felt very free. We were doing what we wanted to do.”

Abstractions from Nature “People would say my forms are abstract. But to my own mind, they are offshoots from nature.”

Untitled (Quarry Face), 1949, pencil, pastel, and ink on paper, 18 × 24 inches. Collection Minnesota Museum of American Art.

Untitled, 1995, colored pencil on paper, 17 × 15 in. Collection Hazel Belvo.

George Morrison came of age as an artist in New York City during the 1940s. The city was an especially exciting place to be for painters and sculptors. In the first decades of the 20th century, one bold movement after another had developed in Europe, where people like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse challenged the belief that art needed to look like the real world. Those ideas took hold in the United States during the 1930s and ‘40s, when many Europeans came here to escape Nazism and World War II. And those radical new ideas shaped George Morrison’s artistic vision and work throughout his life.

As a boy, Morrison spent many hours exploring the rocky shore of Lake Superior and swimming in its icy water. And the look and feel of that environment—rocks, trees, sky, and water— would influence the shapes and textures found in his paintings and sculpture. For him, the most distinct element of any landscape was the horizon, that mysterious place in the distance where land or water meets the sky. That line would become Morrison’s artistic trademark and an essential part of almost every one of his works. Look For: Rounded shapes, like rocks or weathered driftwood Look For: Angular grids, like the facets or layers of a cliff Look For: Repeating patterns, like wood grain or lichen Look For: Colors that sparkle, like sunlit rocks or the setting sun Look For: A sharp line stretching from edge to edge, like a distant horizon or landscape

Return to the Lake “I seek the power of the rock, the magic of the water, the religion of the tree, the color of the wind, and the enigma of the horizon.”

Untitled (Lake Superior Landscape), 1986, acrylic on canvas, 47 ¾ × 47 7/ 8 inches. Collection Minnesota Museum of American Art.

In 1983 when George Morrison retired from teaching, he returned to northern Minnesota and Lake Superior. He built a house and studio just steps from the beach and called his place “Red Rock.” Despite poor health, Morrison continued to create art as often as he could. Being so close to nature and watching it change by the hour and the season was a very personal and spiritual experience for him. He saw the land and water as a connection to his Indian ancestors, who had lived and persevered there for many centuries before he was born. Look For: Variations on a theme or the same subject painted in different ways Look For: Variations in size, from large and public to small and intimate Look For: Pictures that seem like dreams or memories Look For: Pictures that suggest certain songs or music Look For: What Morrison called the “shimmer of nature coming through”