Carl Morris (artist)

Carl Morris
Born	1911 (1911) Yorba Linda, California
Died	1993 (1994) (aged 82)
Occupation	American painter

Morris' mural, "Agriculture" c. 1941, in the Eugene post office

Carl A. Morris (May 12,1911 – June 3,1993) was an American artist. Morris was born in Yorba Linda, California and he studied at the Chicago Art Institute and in Paris and Vienna. He opened the Spokane Art Center through the Federal Art Project during the Great Depression. He met his wife, sculptor Hilda Grossman (Deutsch) when he recruited her as a teacher for the center. Other notable teachers at the center include Guy Anderson and Clyfford Still. Moving to Seattle in 1940, they met Mark Tobey and became lifelong friends.

In 1941, he was commissioned to paint murals for the Eugene, Oregon post office. The Morrises settled in Portland, Oregon and established important and influential artistic careers, beginning as figurative artists and gradually moving toward abstract art. They often visited New York to see friends such as Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Joseph Campbell and Lionel Trilling but declined to relocate, wanting to avoid what they saw as a climate of commercialism and artistic distraction. Morris is known today for his strong Abstract Impressionist paintings.

His work can be seen in collections throughout the U.S., including those of the Portland Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Reed College, the Boise Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. During his life, his work was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Seattle Art Museum.