George Morrison

Collage X Landscape

When Ojibwe artist George Morrison returned to his home state in the Midwest in 1970, he began a series of landscape paintings using wood. He arranged driftwood that he collected along the shorelines of Lake Superior into abstract, geometrical compositions. The diagonal, horizontal, and vertical arrangements of the wood pieces in Collage X Landscape are meant to evoke the constant movement of the lake’s tide and its horizon line. The formal makeup of the piece calls to mind the Constructivist and Cubist influences of Morrison’s earlier years. It also reflects his growing desire to incorporate “Indian values into [his] work,” bringing his practice back—in his words—to “the Indian connection, to Minnesota and [to his] family.” This impulse aligns with the broader historical context of the Red Power Movement, which coincided with Morrison’s return to Minnesota and marked the period between the late 1960s and mid-1970s, when Native American activists implemented a series of actions and protests across the country in the pursuit of rights and self-empowerment.