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Artist: Jim Morphesis
Birth: 1948, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Education: Tyler School of Art of Temple University, Philadelphia, 1966-70 (B.F.A.). California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, 1970-72, (M.F.A.).
Residence: New York/Los Angeles
Teaching: Claremont Graduate School; Otis Art Institute; Los Angeles City College; Los Angeles Pierce College; CSU Northridge; Immaculate Heart College; California Institute of the Arts, Valencia; Pasadena City College.
Major Awards: Los Angeles County Museum of Art Young Talent Purchase Award, 1983. Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, 1985.
Gallery Affiliations: Tortue Gallery, Santa Monica; Works Gallery, Costa Mesa; Marianne Deson Gallery, Chicago; Hal Katzen Gallery, New York.
Museum Collections: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Art; Lanai Foundation, Los Angeles; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Oakland Museum of Art; San Diego Museum of Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
Bibliography:
Spring, Justin. Jim Morphesis; Paintings, 1991-92. Littlejohn/Sternau Gallery, New York, 1992.
"We live in a time when representations of the body no longer provide an easy gateway to spiritual transcendence, but rather encourage us in our own private anxieties and self-doubt. With these paintings, Jim Morphesis has described a state of extreme existential lonliness, a dream in which textures and images and words that once reassured us now add up only to themselves, and our deepest longings and uncertainties contrast with--but find no resolution in--the relics of past belief. They are elegant representations of contemporary spiritual unease: no consolation, just satisfying art."
Welles, Eleanor. Jim Morphesis. Images and Issues, Nov./Dec. 1983.
"When Morphesis was creating minimalist art, he produced iconographic crosses that concealed Christ figures, personal letters, and workds beneath layers of thick impasto. The Cal Arts experience, coupled with a changing aesthetic climate, allowed his underlying emotional and religious interests to surface." (p. 24).
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