Morris Graves

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Morris Graves (actually Maurice Cole Graves, born July 9, 1910 in Fox Valley , Oregon , † May 5, 2001 in Loleta , California ) was an American painter and draftsman . He is assigned to the "Northwest School" of American post-war painting.

life and work

Graves moved to Seattle's Puget Sound region as a child . He was hired as a cabin boy on an East Asia freighter from 1929 to 1931 and visited Tokyo and Shanghai, among others. He began to paint as an autodidact, in 1934 he turned completely to painting. He settled in Seattle with his friend, the painter Guy Anderson (* 1906), where he rented a studio. During his travels he was already occupied with Zen Buddhism , to which he became an increasingly intensive follower. In 1936 and 1937 he worked for the Federal Art Project in Seattle and in 1938 he met John Cage , who was teaching at the Cornish College of the Arts . He served in the U.S. Army in the early 1940s.

He drew the themes of his works, mostly executed in ink, wax and tempera , from the animal world and the landscapes of his youth around the Puget Sound. After meeting Mark Tobey , he turned to calligraphic representations that incorporated mythical elements. This painting was assigned to Abstract Expressionism . From 1946 to 1947 he lived - made possible by a Guggenheim scholarship - for five months in Honolulu, where he waited to enter the military-occupied Japan. Here he got to know Chinese ritual bronzes at the Honolulu Academy of Arts , gave up depicting nature and created 50 paintings with a symbolic content; he also delved into Zen philosophy. In addition to his artistic activity, he was interested in building, first he built a hut in 1942 in Hidalgo the "rock", after the war a house in Edmonds. He didn't always live there, however, but traveled to Mexico, Japan and Europe.

Since 1957, Morris was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 1994 he was elected a member ( NA ) of the National Academy of Design in New York . The American artist Fritz Bultman (1919–1985) was a student of Graves .

Works

  • Eclipse over Germany , 1938, pencil and red ink (from the Nightfall series ), Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • Marsh Swan / Moor Swan , 1933, oil, Seattle Art Museum , Seattle, Washington

Exhibitions

  • 1947: Morris Graves , Willard Gallery, New York
  • 1957: Eight American artists: painting and sculpture. Seattle Art Museum for the US Information Service (traveling exhibition in Germany)
  • 1966: Morris Graves: a Retrospective , University of Oregon Museum of Art, Eugene, Oregon
  • 1990: Morris Graves: Works of Fifty Years De Saisset Museum, Santa Clara, California
  • 1998: Morris Graves Paintings, 1931–97 , Whitney Museum of American Art , New York, NY
  • 2002/03: Sounds of the Inner Eye , Kunsthalle Bremen ; Museum of Glass, Tacoma; Foundation Beyeler
  • 2003: Morris Graves: Symbols & Reality , Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York (Essay: Peter Selz )
  • 2003: Northwest Mythologies: The Interactions of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Anderson , Tacoma Art Museum
The Morris Graves Museum in Eureka contains Morris Graves' personal art collection and many of his own works.

Public collections

Works are located in: Seattle Art Museum ; Henry Art Gallery , Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles County Museum of Art among others

literature

  • Werner Haftmann : Painting in the 20th Century , Bruckmann, Munich, p. 487 f., P. 592
  • Herbert Read  : Moris Graves, in: Kindler's Painting Lexicon, Volume II, Kindler, Zurich, 1965, p. 741 f.
  • George Michael Cohen: The Bird Paintings of Morris Graves. In: College art journal. Vol. 18, 1958, pp. 3-19.
  • The Drawings of Morris Graves. New York Graphic Society, Boston 1974, ISBN 0-316-19305-4 .
  • Flower Paintings. University of Washington Press, Seattle et al., 1994, ISBN 0-295-97379-X .
  • Sounds of the Inner Eye: Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, John Cage. (Works on paper). Schirmer / Mosel, Munich et al. 2002, ISBN 3-8296-0013-5 (exhibition catalog: Kunsthalle Bremen; the Museum of Glass, Tacoma; Fondation Beyeler; 2002/2003. Ed .: Wolf Herzogenrath et al.).
  • Northwest Mythologies: The Interactions of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Anderson. University of Washington Press, Seattle / London 2003, ISBN 978-0-29598322-6 . (Exhibition catalog: Tacoma Art Museum, May 3 to August 10, 2003).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Robert Yarber: A Short Biography. ( Memento of the original from November 22, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the library website of the Humboldt State University, in English, accessed on March 3, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / library.humboldt.edu
  2. ^ Members: Morris Graves. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 1, 2019 .
  3. ↑ nationalacademy.org: Past Academicians "G" / Graves, Morris NA 1994 ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed June 24, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nationalacademy.org
  4. ^ Getty Museum, Union List of Artist Names , accessed March 3, 2011
  5. ↑ Shows 111 drawings and paintings (as of 2011) , English, March 3, 2011
  6. ↑ Shows 6 fig. (Status: 2011)  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in English, accessed March 3, 2011@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / collectionsonline.lacma.org  

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Graves, Morris
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Graves, Morris Cole (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter and printmaker
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Fox Valley , Oregon
DATE OF DEATH May 5, 2001
Place of death Loleta , California