It gives us tremendous pleasure to present this overview of works by Jean Morrison (1917–1994), a painter and printmaker whose career unfolded quietly but with unwavering dedication to material, form, and abstraction. Working across media–drawing, painting, and printmaking–Morrison developed a visual language marked by structural clarity, subtle emotion, and a refined command of color and gesture.
Morrison studied at Sarah Lawrence College and Slade School of Art in England before finding her way to Atelier 17 in New York. There she worked along side Stanley William Hayter and the many established European and young American artists attracted to the intense formal experimentation in intaglio techniques. The influence of Hayter’s avant-garde printmaking studio is evident in her sensitivity to surface, texture, and spatial ambiguity. Yet Morrison’s work diverges from the surrealist impulse common among her Atelier 17 peers. Her approach is more restrained, architectural—concerned less with chance and more with balance, rhythm, and internal coherence.
Across decades, Morrison remained committed to abstraction as a vehicle for inquiry and resonance. Her compositions often emerge through a disciplined interplay of line and shape, built from close attention to process and the physicality of her materials. Whether through layered intaglio prints or precise works on panel, she achieved a rare harmony: visual calm with underlying tension.
From 1949 on Morrison worked largely outside the dominant art-world narratives of her time, and yet her practice was no less rigorous. Her work, under recognized during her lifetime, has begun to receive renewed attention for its formal intelligence and enduring relevance.
Our selection offers a glimpse into her evolving vocabulary–one shaped by study, solitude, and a lifelong belief in the expressive possibilities of abstraction.
