Indian Composition #8

The present work belongs to a series of twelve paintings that George L.K. Morris infused with references to Native American culture in an effort to create a distinctly American mode of abstraction. Morris had visited Santa Fe in the early 1930s and was inspired by the colors and flattened forms of indigenous art, which he combined with Cubist elements into compelling symmetrical compositions, such as the present work. Other examples from the series are in the collections of The Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.