George Morrison

Life & Legacy

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). Morrison's work is associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement in the United States.

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.

Much of Morrison's non-figurative painting reflects the artist's sustained interest in landscape influenced by Indigenous visual cultures. In 2020, he became the first Native American artist to be included in the New York School collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.