George Morrison

George Morrison (September 30, 1919 – April 17, 2000) was an Ojibwe abstract painter and sculptor from Minnesota. His Ojibwe name was Wah Wah Teh Go Nay Ga Bo (Standing In the Northern Lights).

Between the 1940s through the 1960s, he worked and exhibited alongside Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock, among other contemporary American artists in New York City. Between 1970 and 1983, Morrison taught studio art and Native American studies at the University of Minnesota. After retiring from teaching in 1983, he lived and worked at his home and studio in Grand Portage Indian Reservation by Lake Superior until his death in 2000.

Morrison was one of 12 children in a poor household. His father worked as a trapper and used his fluency in the Ojibwe language to interpret court proceedings. As a child, Morrison spent months in a full body cast recovering from a surgery. During this period of recuperation, he began to draw.

Morrison briefly attended a Native American boarding school in Hayward, Wisconsin. Due to poor health, Morrison returned to Minnesota and attended a Native American sanatorium in Onigum, Minnesota and the Gillette State Hospital for Crippled Children in St. Paul.

Having been chosen to receive the Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Traveling Scholarship, Morrison studied at the Art Students League from 1943 to 1946 in New York City, where he became part of a circle of abstract expressionists and was exposed to artistic styles such as cubism and surrealism.

Legacy In 2022, Morrison's work was honored by the United States Postal Service with the release of a stamp series featuring five of his paintings.

Art

Morrison learned the established Western methods of representational painting during his time at the Minneapolis School of Art. However, during his time at the Art Students League in New York City Morrison's style became more modernist and abstract.

Twin Cities Tile and Marble Company became experts in moving Morrison's beautiful granite "Tableau – A Native American Mosaic." It's been moved from the entrance to the IDS Center (1992), to the front of the Minneapolis Central Library (2004), to between 11th and 12th Streets (2020) at the entrance to the Loring Greenway, all on Nicollet in downtown Minneapolis.

The United States Postal Service released five Morrison paintings in a series of Forever Stamps on April 22, 2022. Among the paintings featured on the Morrison Forever stamps are Sun and River (1949), Phenomena Against the Crimson: Lake Superior Landscape (1985), Lake Superior Landscape (1981), Spirit Path, New Day, Red Rock Variation: Lake Superior Landscape (1990), and Untitled (1995).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City presented The Magical City: George Morrison's New York, July 17, 2025–May 31, 2026. The exhibition was accompanied by an issue of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin.