Totems #2

Artist and writer George L.K. Morris was a staunch advocate for American modernism. While in Paris in the late 1920s he briefly studied with Léger and met artists such as Braque, Picasso, and Mondrian. Nicknamed "Park Avenue Cubist," Morris embraced a form of abstraction that combined the structural order of Cubism with specifically American imagery. In 1936, he was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists Group. Totem #2 typically combines geometric abstraction with Native American motives, including birch bark fragments. (Native to northern U.S. states, the tree was used by Indigenous Americans for many products, from footwear to canoes.) Morris believed that from a synthesis of international and national elements an authentic American art could emerge.