Malcolm A. Morley (June 7, 1931 – June 1, 2018) was a British-American visual artist and painter. He was known as an artist who pioneered in various styles, working as a photorealist and an expressionist, among many other genres. In 1984, he won the inaugural Turner Prize.

Life

Morley was born in north London. He had a troubled childhood—after his home was partially blown up by a bomb during World War II, his family was homeless for a time. He recalled that he had constructed a balsawood model of and placed it on his windowsill when the German bomb destroyed the house along with the model. "The shock was so violent," writes one Morley expert, "that Morley repressed this memory until it resurfaced 30 years later during a psychoanalytic session." He would later look back on these rough beginnings with some humor: "I [feel] very sorry for artists that haven't had much happen in their early life," he once said. Released after two years for good behavior, he joined an artists' colony in St. Ives, Cornwall, then studied art first at the Camberwell School of Arts, described by one art historian as being, at the time, "one of the more progressive and exciting art schools in London," and then at the Royal College of Art (1955–1957), where his fellow students included Peter Blake and Frank Auerbach. In 1956, he saw the exhibition "Modern Art in the United States: A Selection from the Collections at the Museum of Modern Art" His first solo exhibition was at Kornblee Gallery in 1964, partly at the urging of the art dealer Ivan Karp, who had a reputation as a talent spotter and had worked with the legendary dealer Leo Castelli.

thumb|Tackle, 2004 by Malcolm Morley

Morley had early solo gallery exhibitions at venues including the Clocktower Gallery, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, New York (1976); Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York (1979); and Stefanotty Gallery, New York (1979). He participated in the major international exhibition Documenta, in Kassel, in 1972<!-- WP:RS needed; removed link to WP--> and 1977<!-- WP:RS needed; removed link to WP-->, and in the Carnegie International, in 1985.

The Whitechapel Gallery, in London, organized a major retrospective exhibition in 1983, resulting in his winning the inaugural Turner Prize, awarded by the Tate, in 1984.

The following year, he bought a Methodist church in Bellport, Long Island, New York State, where he would reside for the remainder of his life. In the early 1980s he was married to the Brazilian artist Marcia Grostein. Morley was granted American citizenship in 1990. He was the subject of museum exhibitions at venues including Tate Liverpool (1991); the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1993); Fundación La Caixa, Madrid (1995); the Hayward Gallery, London (2001); and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2013–14).

At the time of his death Morley resided in Bellport, New York, where he shared a home with Lida Morley, his loving and caring wife since 1986. He died in Bellport on June 1, 2018, six days shy of his 87th birthday.

Work

Morley's earliest work upon leaving art school, while remaining in England, adopted traditional, naturalist styles of painting. His work was "a compromise between old-school observation-based naturalism and art that was modern mostly because its subjects were recognizably of the present."

After his arrival in New York, he began in the early 1960s to work abstractly, creating several paintings made up of only horizontal bands with vague suggestions of nautical themes, whether in imagery or in the works' titles.

He also met Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and, influenced in part by them, made the drastic change to a photorealist style (Morley preferred the phrase Superrealist). Inspired by seeing Richard Artschwager using this technique, he began to use a grid to transfer photographic images (often of ships) to canvas, and became one of the first and most noted photorealists, along with Gerhard Richter, Richard Artschwager, and Vija Celmins.

After seeing one of Morley's paintings of an ocean liner, Artschwager suggested that Morley visit Pier 57 and paint some ships from life. "I went down to Pier 57, took a canvas and tried to make a painting outside," Morley said. "But it was impossible to comprehend it in one glance, one end is over there, the other end is over there, a 360-degree impossibility. I was in disgust—I took a postcard of this cruise ship called the Queen of Bermuda." Farewell to Crete, and Black Rainbow Over Oedipus at Thebes (1988) and depicting Minoan figures; travel to the United States also resulted in prominent use of Native American kachina dolls and other motifs from those cultures. His commercial success offered him the opportunity to travel to these places and many more, resulting in diverse new influences and inspirations. The artist also returned to the "catastrophes" that were among his early subjects, depicting car crashes (including one showing the crash that resulted in the death of auto racing star Dale Earnhardt), the aftermath of the War in Afghanistan, and the collapse of a building in Brooklyn, among other subjects. In the last decade of his life, Morley continued to depict early- and mid-twentieth-century fighter planes, as well as the pilots who flew them during World Wars I and II, including the legendary flying ace Manfred von Richthofen, the "Red Baron." He also focused on 18th-century English history, creating works that incorporated military figures such as Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington and Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson. "I fell in love with the period," he once said, "which was a great one for the British."

Selected works in public and private collections

  • Cristoforo Colombo, 1966, Hall Foundation
  • Family Portrait, 1968, Detroit Institute of Arts
  • Coronation and Beach Scene, 1968, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
  • Vermeer, Portrait of the Artist in His Studio, 1968, The Broad
  • Age of Catastrophe, 1976, The Broad
  • Day of the Locust, 1977, Museum of Modern Art
  • Cradle of Civilization with American Woman, 1982, Centre Pompidou
  • French Legionnaires Being Eaten by a Lion, 1984, Museum of Modern Art
  • Kristen and Erin, 1985, The Broad
  • Black Rainbow Over Oedipus at Thebes, 1988, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
  • Man Overboard, 1994, Hall Foundation
  • Mariner, 1998, Tate
  • Painter's Floor, 1999, Albright Knox Art Gallery
  • Theory of Catastrophe, 2004, Hall Foundation
  • Thor, 2008, Gary Tatintsian Gallery
  • Medieval Divided Self, 2016, Hall Foundation

Recognition

Selected Honors/Awards:

  • 1984 Turner Prize, Tate Gallery, London, England
  • 1992 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Painting Award
  • 2009 Inductee, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Class IV: Humanities and Arts, Section 5: Visual and Performing Arts—Criticism and Practice
  • 2011 Elected as Member, American Academy of Arts and Letters
  • 2015 Francis J. Greenburger Award, Omi International Arts Center, Ghent, New York

Selected institutional exhibitions and retrospectives

Source:

  • 2022 - Malcolm Morley: Shipwreck, Nova Southern University Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
  • 2019 - Malcolm Morely, Hall Art Foundation, Reading, VT
  • 2017 - Malcolm Morley: Works from the Hall Collection, Hall Art Foundation, Schloss Derneburg Museum, Derneburg, Germany
  • 2013 - Malcolm Morley at the Ashmolean : Paintings and Drawings from the Hall Collection, curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  • 2012 - Malcolm Morley: Painting, Paper, Process, Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York City
  • 2006 - Malcolm Morley: The Art of Painting, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL
  • 1993 - Malcolm Morley, Musée national d’art moderne Centre de création industrielle, Paris, France, travelled to Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain Midi-Pyrénées, Labège-Toulouse, France
  • 1991 - Malcolm Morley: Watercolours, Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, The Netherlands, travelled to Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Tate Gallery Liverpool, Liverpool, UK; The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY, US
  • 1983 - Malcolm Morley: Paintings, 1965 - 82, Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland, travelled Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, US; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; The Brooklyn Museum, NY, US

Art market

  1. $1,886,723 – SS Amsterdam in Front of Rotterdam, 1966. Christie's, Jun 30, 2015.
  2. $997,455 – Cristoforo Colomb, 1965. Sotheby's, Feb 27, 2008.
  3. $601,375 – Safety is Your Business, 1971. Christie's, Jun 27, 2012.

Public collections

Morley's work is included in public collections including:

  • Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
  • Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK
  • Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway
  • Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, Holland
  • Broad Foundation, Los Angeles, California
  • Centre Pompidou, Paris
  • Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
  • Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York
  • Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
  • Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
  • Kröller-Müller Museum, Netherlands
  • Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
  • Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany
  • Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary
  • Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art Paget, Bermuda
  • Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, New York
  • Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  • Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
  • Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Spain
  • Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois
  • Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California
  • Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Utrecht, Netherlands
  • National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
  • National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
  • Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida
  • Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York
  • Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island
  • Sammlung Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany
  • Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington
  • Tate, London
  • Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia
  • Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
  • Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

References

  • Malcolm Morley at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels
  • Malcolm Morley at Sperone Westwater
  • Artist page at Gary Tatintsian Gallery
  • A Tribute to Malcolm Morley at the Brooklyn Rail
  • Malcolm Morley in the Museum of Modern Art
  • Malcolm Morley in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
  • Malcolm Morley at Tate
  • “Malcolm Morley: Works from the Hall Collection” at the Hall Foundation
  • Malcolm Morley: The Principal of Uncertainty - Interview at Border Crossings