Throughout his life, Morris Graves lived in remote settings, drawing inspiration from the close observation of nature and imbuing his subjects—predominately animals and plants— with poetic and symbolic qualities. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Graves pursued this singular artistic vision, deliberately maintaining his distance, both geographically and conceptually, from the contemporary New York art scene despite the sudden acclaim he received after exhibiting at MoMA in 1942. 

Morris Graves: The Nature of Things features a focused ensemble of the artist’s works from the 1930s to 1950s, a pivotal period in his career. The early paintings and exquisite works on paper, largely from LACMA’s collection, are on display in tandem with select objects from the museum’s Chinese, Japanese and Nepalese holdings. Together they highlight the ways that Asian aesthetics and philosophy informed Graves’s oeuvre.