Morris Graves, a founding member of the Northwest School of art and the last of the “Northwest Mystics,” has died. He was 90.
Mr. Graves died Saturday after a stroke at his northern California home near the town of Loleta.
Mr. Graves was the sole survivor of a group of four artists dubbed the “Mystic Painters of the Northwest” in a 1953 Life magazine piece.
He and the others–Mark Tobey, Guy Anderson and Kenneth Callahan–were known for a philosophy that combined Eastern religious beliefs and an appreciation for the natural world.
By the late 1930s, he had developed a style characterized by a sense of motion and transformation and exemplified by his “Bird Singing in the Moonlight” and “Little Known Bird of the Inner Eye.”
In 1942, 30 of his works appeared in a Museum of Modern Art exhibition in New York titled “Americans 1942: 18 Artists from 9 States.”
While reclusive, Mr. Graves also traveled extensively and developed friendships with leading-edge artists, including composer John Cage and dancer Merce Cunningham.
Although many of his early paintings were done at a cabin Mr. Graves built for himself near Anacortes, about 85 miles north of Seattle, he had lived in California since the 1970s.
