Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Jun 19 – Sep 7 2014 Seattle Art Museum Simonyi Special Exhibition Galleries Meet the mystics—the four artists who, in the late 1930s and ‘40s, became known as the Northwest School of modern art. Fed by one another’s passions and talents, Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson sought to create art that consciously responded to the world events around them. All saw art as a form of spiritual quest. All were influenced by the Northwest’s swirling mix of Native American and Asian traditions. Soon, they were known in New York and across the country—regional artists whose visions, for a time, were universal. This summer, see these critically acclaimed American modernists at the Seattle Art Museum, which holds one of the largest and finest collections of their work. Tweet
“ When I’d go downtown at night…I’d always feel crowds coming, there were so many people. I began to paint crowds because they flooded the markets and they flooded the streets and they worked all night. ” Mark Tobey
“ You were concerned with the state of the world…The Depression and the isolation—we were all experiencing a kind of despair— ” Morris Graves
“ I've never been completely won over to the pure school of landscape painting, though, or the pure school of still life, or the complete and pure school of abstraction…they are always the background for development of all the richness of the later forms…on the earth. ” Guy Anderson