Morris Graves
Morris Graves
1910 - 2001
American painter. A self-taught artist of great sensitivity, he absorbed influences from different cultures, initially seeking to capture the spirit of the American Northwest by depicting its birds, vegetation and primitive agricultural utensils using earth colours and a heavy impasto. Moor Swan (1933; Seattle, WA, A. Mus.) is a good example of this phase, but his work underwent a radical change in the 1930s following several trips to the Far East as a seaman from 1928 to 1931, through which he was exposed to oriental art and culture. He became fascinated by Buddhism, Daoism and Zen and began to experiment in works such as Snake and Moon (1938–9; New York, MOMA) with different techniques in order to translate the philosophical ideas into a pictorial language, particularly after meeting Mark Tobey and John Cage in the mid-1930s. Although he continued to use birds as symbols of spirituality and of a sense of oneness with the universe, as in Little-known Bird of the Inner Eye (1941; New York, MOMA), he became increasingly involved in works with the calligraphic marks and methods of all-over composition practised by Tobey. He drew ever closer to oriental art, particularly while working as an instructor from 1940 to 1942 at the Seattle Art Museum, with its exceptionally rich collection of oriental art.
Graves was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1946 to study in Japan but was forbidden to go there because of the military occupation. Instead he travelled to Hawaii, where he spent a year studying the oriental art collection of the Honolulu Academy of Arts. In striking contrast to the dark mood of that period, he created works imbued with splendid sunlight and warmth. During the 1970s he produced realistic still-lifes, for example Summer Flowers for Denise (1978; Seattle, WA, A. Mus.). Although he afterwards turned again to more purely abstract works, this time using dynamic lines and curves to reflect the turmoil of modern life, he continued to incorporate bird-like shapes as reminders of the landscape in which his vision as an artist was first formed in his youth. [Alberto Cernuschi. "Graves, Morris." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T034148.]
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