George L.K. Morris
Untitled [Abstraction]
c. late 1940s

Name: Untitled [Abstraction]
Brand: George L.K. Morris
Price: 45000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Gouache on paper, 18 7/8 x 14 3/4 in. Signed (at lower right): Morris; (with monogram, on the back): GLKM [monogram] / 1932 [sic] Executed circa late 1940s A passionate advocate of abstract art during the 1930s and 1940s, George L. K. Morris was active as a painter, sculptor, editor, and critic. An erudite man with an internationalist point of view, Morris eschewed the social, political, and figural concerns that preoccupied so many artists of Depression-era America, believing that painters should focus their attention on the beauty, refinement, and simplicity of pure form instead. His goal, he said, was “to wedge the expression further and further into the confines of the canvas until every shape takes on a spatial meaning” (as quoted in Ward Jackson, “George L. K. Morris: Forty Years of Abstract Art,” Art Journal 32 [Winter 1972–73], p. 150). Born into an affluent family in New York City, Morris was a descendent of General Lewis Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. From 1918 until 1924, he attended the Groton School in Connecticut, studying classics and art. He continued to focus on literature and art while attending Yale University (1924–28), an experience that prepared him well for his future activity as an artist-critic. After graduating in 1928, Morris studied at the Art Students League of New York, working under the realist painters John Sloan and Kenneth Hayes Miller, as well as Jan Matulka, the only modernist on the faculty. In the spring of 1929, Morris traveled to Paris with Albert E. Gallatin, a family friend and fellow painter who introduced him to leading members of the Parisian avant-garde, including Jean Arp, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Hélion, and Piet Mondrian. Morris also took classes at the Académie Moderne, studying under Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant, important exponents of Synthetic Cubism who influenced his aesthetic development. Indeed, after experimenting with the simplified forms of Modernism for a few years, Morris moved on to abstraction by 1934, adopting a hard-edged, geometric approach inspired by Leger’s cubist style and the biomorphic shapes of Arp and Joan Miró. Following his return to New York in 1930, Morris built a white-walled, open-spaced studio (inspired by that of Ozenfant, which had been designed by Le Corbusier) on the grounds of Brockhurst, his parents’ 46-acre estate in Lenox, Massachusetts. In 1935, he married the painter and collagist Estelle “Suzy” Frelinghuysen (1911–1988), who shared his penchant for abstraction. One year later, the couple helped found American Abstract Artists, a group of forward-thinking artists dedicated to promoting geometric abstraction in the United States. Untitled features a tight, mosaic-like network of squares (some plain, others embedded with circles) contained within carefully delineated contours set against a backdrop of radiating color planes that converge on the segmented disc that serves as the focal point of the composition. (The evolution of Morris’s style, as he moved from a tentative modernist aesthetic to the type of geometric abstraction exemplified in Untitled is apparent upon perusal of the verso of the sheet, which features a watercolor study from 1932. The summarily rendered shapes suggest the influence of Henri Matisse, who Morris had met in New York in 1931, while the fragmented lines point to his growing penchant for Cubism. Despite the high degree of stylization, however, the site can easily be identified as the Pulitzer Fountain in Manhattan’s Grand Army Plaza [at the southeast entrance to Central Park across from the Plaza Hotel], a well-known landmark crowned by Karl Bitter’s allegorical bronze sculpture, Pomona, the Roman goddess of abundance [erected 1916].) By altering the sizes of the patches and juxtaposing solid areas of color (blue, black, and white) with subtle greys, tans, and pale pinks, Morris creates a tunnel-like sense of depth while retaining the tension and structural integrity of the two-dimensional picture plane. The artist’s kaleidoscope-like arrangement of planar forms readily brings to mind the words of the critic Frank Getlein, who described the effect as being “somewhat similar to that of looking down the well of a staircase” (Frank Getlein, “Knaths and Morris in Washington,” The New Republic 152 [May 15, 1965], n.p.). In 1941, Morris and Freylinghusen added a streamlined, Bauhaus-inspired residence (designed by John Butler Swann) on to their Lenox studio, selling one of their Picassos to underwrite the cost. (Decorated with their own frescoes, modernist furniture, and their extensive collection of abstract art, the Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been open to the public since 1998.) After his solo debut at the Valentine Gallery in New York in 1933, Morris went on to exhibit his work in other leading commercial establishments, among them Edith Halpert’s legendary Downtown Gallery, the Reinhardt Galleries, the Alan Gallery, and Hirschl & Adler Galleries, as well as at venues abroad, including Galerie Pierre and Galerie Colette Allendy in Paris and the Mayor Gallery in London. He also had one-man shows at the Berkshire Museum in 1933 and 1966 and at Yale University in 1935. Morris likewise participated in the annual exhibitions at the National Academy of Design, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Carnegie Institute, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He continued to exhibit his work into the early 1970s, winning the National Academy’s Saltus Gold Medal in 1973. Morris died on June 26, 1975, following an automobile accident near Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Creator:

George L.K. Morris (1905-1975, American)

Creation Year:

c. late 1940s

Dimensions:

Height: 18.88 in (47.96 cm)Width: 14.75 in (37.47 cm)

Medium:

Paper,Gouache

Movement & Style:

American Modern

Period:

1940-1949