%C2%A9 Estate of George Morrison %2F Briand Morrison
Red Rock Variation: Surrealist Landscape, 1987
George Morrisonexpand_more
Colored inks and frottage on paperexpand_more
Gift of Bill and Krista Thorburnexpand_more 2017.94.1
Not on Viewexpand_more
A member of the Anishinaabe people of the Grand Portage Reservation, George Morrison was active in the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, a mid-20th-century movement of avant-garde artists who saw abstraction as the essential vehicle for conveying intense emotion and exploring the unconscious through color, form, space, and gesture. Though his work is largely non-representational, Morrison relied on observations and memories of nature for inspiration and subject matter. The present drawing is part of his extended series of “Surrealist landscapes,” dreamlike depictions of land and sky that resulted from automatic drawing techniques he adopted as a way to tap into the mind’s subconscious. As here, these abstracted landscapes featured high horizon lines and a flattened perspectives, a signature motif that embodied Morrison’s spiritual and symbolic methodology.
Details
- Title
- Red Rock Variation: Surrealist Landscape
- Artist Life
- (Grand Portage Anishinaabe), 1919 - 2000
- Role
- Artist
- Accession Number
- 2017.94.1
- Provenance
- (Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, sold to Thorburn); Krista and William Thorburn, Minneapolis; given to MIA, 2017.
- Curator Approved
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© Estate of George Morrison / Briand Morrison