A descendant of General Lewis Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, George L. K. Morris was born in New York City. Morris was a graduate of Yale University and studied under John Sloan and Kenneth Hayes Miller at the Art Students League before traveling to Paris to work with Fernand Léger at the Académie Moderne. Léger’s Cubist style shaped Morris’s approach to his own abstract compositions. Morris was a strong advocate of American Modernism both as an artist and a critic. He was the founder of the American Abstract Artists, and he edited their publication The World of Abstract Art, The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, and Partisan Review. He married the abstract artist Suzy Frelinghuysen, and the two lived a lavish lifestyle. They had homes in New York City, the Berkshires, and Paris.

Morris was one of Modernism’s earliest and most articulate American spokesmen, who came to believe that paintings were capable of expressing a universal abstract language. Concretion is a non-representational work of colored forms in an undefined space. Against an earth-toned background, the amorphous shapes of Concretion maintain a rhythmic and harmonic balance.

Lorenz, Melinda A. George L. K. Morris: Artist and Critic. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982.