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The Northwest School & Friends

Morris Graves, Guy Anderson, Mark Tobey, & Kenneth Callahan

About the Exhibition

Showing

December 8, 2024 - January 31, 2025

Visit Us

Paying homage to the “Golden Era of Northwest Art” by the “Big Four” or the “Northwest Mystics”, Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan & Guy Anderson at the Woodside Braseth Gallery.

Their artwork became recognized nationally when LIFE magazine published a 1953 feature article on them.  It was the first such broad recognition of artists from this corner of the world beyond traditional Northwest Native American art forms, which had been long recognized as, “Northwest Art”.

These artists combined natural elements of the Puget Sound area with traditional Asian aesthetics to create a novel and distinct regional style, particularly in painting and sculpture, with some drawing, printmaking and photography.  Tobey, Callahan, Graves and Anderson were all immersed in and greatly influenced by the atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest’s environment.

Seattle was a common locale, which they all shared at points in their lives, and some of them were closely associated for a time with the Seattle Art Museum in Volunteer Park.  Over time, the influence of the natural setting of Western Washington, especially the flat lands, meandering river channels, and wide-open skies of the Skagit Valley, became a unifying aspect of their art.

There are so many interesting and rare to the market artworks in this exhibition we hope you will take the opportunity to come see this iconic group of artists’ works on view at the Woodside Braseth Gallery.