Hilda Grossman Morris

Who was Hilda Grossman Morris?

Hilda Grossman Morris was a sculptor of the Northwest School, working mainly in bronze.

Morris and her husband, the Abstract Expressionist painter Carl Morris, settled in Portland, Oregon in 1941. Except for extended trips to her hometown New York City and in later years Pietrasanta, Italy to cast bronze sculptures, she worked in Portland. Her work introduced rigorous thinking about abstraction to the Pacific Northwest incorporating the rhythms of dance, music, and mathematics, emphasizing the organization of organic structure.

Hilda Morris' works have been shown in exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Art; Denver Art Museum; Portland Art Museum; Seattle Art Museum; Dayton Art Institute; Amon Carter Museum; University of Illinois; Seattle World's Fair; University of California, LA; Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo, Brazil; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and American Federation of Arts traveling exhibitions. In 1960 she was awarded a major fellowship by the Ford Foundation. Commissioned sculptures by Hilda Morris are in the Seattle Opera House Muted Harp; Standard Plaza, Portland The Ring of Time; and Pacific National Building, Tacoma WA Sea Myth. Her work is represented in the collections of the Chase-Manhattan Bank; California Palace of the Legion of Honor; Museum of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute; University of Oregon Museum of Art; Reed College; University of Victoria, BC; Tacoma Art Museum; Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., Collection of the Virginia Museum; and San Francisco Museum of Art.