Contact:          Theresa Downing
                          651-266-1034
                          tdowning@mmaa.org

                      The Minnesota Museum of American Art presents:

George Morrison: Finding Abstraction

Exhibition dates: August 4 through October 29, 2006 

St. Paul, MN–The Minnesota Museum of American Art is pleased to announce the opening of its new exhibition George Morrison: Finding Abstraction comprised of over 60 works of art solely from the MMAA’s permanent collection. This exhibition highlights Native American and Minnesotan artist George Morrison’s East Coast years when he explored Abstract Expressionism and the sounds of jazz music, to the development of his signature North Shore horizon style. The majority of these pieces—many from his sketchbooks—have never before been on view in the Twin Cities.

This exhibition is not retrospective in nature, but rather an opportunity to view the holdings of one of the largest public collections of George Morrison’s artwork. Many of these pieces were on view for the inaugural exhibition at the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. which opened in September 2004. Over 50 pieces in the exhibition are works on paper, and about 40 pieces have never been on display in the Twin Cities (20 have never been on view). 

The MMAA’s collection is particularly strong in work that Morrison created when he lived in New York and on the East Coast (1943-1970), a pivotal time in his development as an artist and in finding abstraction. It was in New York during his Art Students League years that he became friends with artists such as Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollack (credited with breaking the ice of the new style- Abstract Expressionism). During this time Morrison was encouraged to draw and paint abstractly which he believed would never have happened if he had remained in Minnesota.

More than half the exhibition is comprised of pieces that Morrison created during the years he spent outside of Minnesota. Several early figure sketches show Morrison’s clear facility with representational drawing and a striking difference to his later abstract works. In other figure drawings Morrison gradually breaks the figure up into dimensional sections with a Cubist-style treatment. 

Jazzy free-form drawings in ink and wash from the 50s and 60s show gesture and abstraction in its purest form. Morrison and other artists of his time referred to them as “automatic”. Paintings from the 1960s show Morrison continuing to embrace expressionism with textured and scumbled surfaces in deep ochres, oranges and greens.

From the 1970s-90s, MMAA’s collection holds many of Morrison’s North Shore inspired horizon works including line drawings on colored papers, sketches of constellations over Lake Superior, and several studies of forms breaking up in front of the abstracted lakefront. The MMAA’s driftwood relief Cumulated Landscape (4’ high x 10’ wide) from 1976 is a mature example of Morrison’s continued expression in abstraction. The exhibition will also feature small horizon paintings from the late 1980s and four pastel landscape paintings of Lake Superior that Morrison made from the same view of the lake at different times of the day. 

Like many other artists in his day, Morrison worked through a variety of popular styles, but through those experiences he emerged with and maintained a unique artistic voice in abstraction.

Some facts on Morrison:

When Morrison studied at the Art Students League in New York, he spent summers in cities on the Atlantic Ocean. He traveled to Paris and Antibes in 1952 on a Fulbright Scholarship. He taught in Ohio in 1960, and then at Rhode Island School of Design from 1963-70. In 1970, Morrison returned to Minnesota and taught at the University of Minnesota in Studio Arts and American Indian Studies. To be close to the lake, Morrison and his wife Hazel Belvo built Red Rock their Lake Superior home in the early 1980s. He retired in 1983.

George Morrison was born in 1919 in Chippewa City, Minnesota. He was an Ojibwe Indian who was enrolled in the Grand Portage (Lake Superior) Band. In the mid-1980s Morrison was diagnosed with Castleman’s disease, and he died in the year 2000 in Grand Marais, Minnesota.  

Special Preview Party and Patio Night

Thursday, August 3, 2006

7-10pm

$5/$3 MMAA Members

Live music under the stars

All-Ages

Cash Bar

In partnership with Twin Cities Independent Public Radio and Great Waters Brewing Company

The Minnesota Museum of American Art is pleased to be partnering with Twin Cities Independent Public Radio stations KFAI, KBEM, Radio K, and KMOJ to bring downtown St. Paul an eclectic mix of local music.  Patio Nights are every Thursday through August 31 from 7-10pm on our river view patio. Sponsored by The Rake: Secrets of the City.

ABOUT MMAA
Experience and explore the energy and depth of American visual culture at the Minnesota Museum of American Art in downtown St. Paul. MMAA's Riverfront Gallery at Kellogg Boulevard and Market Street is a place for the traditional and the unconventional. At MMAA the diversity of art and artists—past, present, and emerging—is revealed through music, performance, dance, fashion, painting, film, and sculpture. For more information call 651-266-1030 or visit www.mmaa.org.

Hours:

Tuesday 11am-4pm
Wednesday 11am-4pm
Thursday 11am-8pm
Friday 11am-4pm
Saturday 11am-4pm
Sunday 1-5pm
Closed Monday and Major Holidays 

Admission: FREE

For more information:
www.mmaa.org

651-266-1030

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