Hilda Morris

One of the premier sculptors of her generation in the Northwest, Hilda Morris (1911-1993) lived her artistic life in the center of the region's circle of avant-garde painters, sculptors, poets, and musicians. This is the first book to document her half-century-long career and presents Morris's highly individual abstract sculptures against the backdrop of artistic developments during the second half of the twentieth century. A part of the abstract expressionist movement, Morris's vigorous, gestural sculptures inspired by mythological and universal symbols were instrumental in introducing a rigorous, expansive thinking about abstraction to the Pacific Northwest community. As an account of her life and the first complete survey of her entire oeuvre - sculpture, painting, and drawing - this volume will be essential to an understanding of the period.

Bruce Guenther is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Portland Art Museum.