George Morrison (1919-2000)

Hiro Fine Art is interested in purchasing artworks by George Morrison.

George Morrison was born in Chippewa City, Minnesota which is just north of Grand Marais. Morrison grew up in the Grand Portage band of Chippewa Indians and went on to study on scholarship at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He studied with Alexander Masley and Frances Greenman; these artists introduced Morrison to modern art by showing him works by Picasso and Matisse as well as studying Bauhaus design.

Morrison moved to New York to attend the Art Students League. He studied under the artist Morris Kantor, living in New York during the Abstract Expressionist movement. Morris exhibited some of his surrealist and richly colored abstract artworks while in New York. His artworks were displayed alongside art created by Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning at the James Gallery Invitational annual exhibit. In Europe, he briefly studied in Paris on a Fulbright Scholarship, studied at the University of Aix-Marseilles, and was introduced to many modernists. He returned to America and taught at the Rhode Island School of Design for a period before finally returning to Minnesota in 1970.

While teaching studio art at the University of Minnesota Morrison founded the Indian Studies program. He retired in 1983 and moved to the North Shore of Lake Superior where he began experimenting and creating large scale sculpture and brightly colored abstract paintings. His artwork can be found in several important museum collections such as the Minneapolis Institute of Art, National Museum of American Indians, Tweed Museum of Art and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.

In 2018 the Minneapolis Institute of Art held an exhibition of George Morrison’s work:
George Morrison: Drawings and Small Paintings

 

  • 1919 – Born in Chippewa City, Minnesota
  • Studied with Frances Greenman and Alexander Masley at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design
  • Moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League
  • Exhibited at James Gallery Invitational Annual with Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning
  • Studied in Paris, France on Fulbright Scholarship
  • 1970 – Moved back to Minnesota
  • 1983 – Retired from teaching and moved to the North Shore of Lake Superior to continue painting