Morris Blackburn: PAFA Modernist, Works 1939-1949

The Alumni Gallery is pleased to present Morris Blackburn: PAFA Modernist, Works 1939-1949.

Morris Blackburn attended PAFA from 1925 to 1929, where he studied with Arthur Carles, Henry McCarter and Daniel Garber and won PAFA’s prestigious Cresson Traveling Scholarship. In 1936, he began taking private classes with Arthur Carles. At this time, Blackburn said: “It was Carles who impressed me with the deep sense of the importance of being a painter”. It was during this period that Blackburn’s paintings and prints evolved into abstraction.

The work on view in the Alumni Gallery represents his work starting in the 1930s through the 1940s. In addition to his work as a painter, he is well known for his accomplishments as an etcher, engraver and lithographer.

He is represented in public collections including Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, the Clearwater Museum, the United States State Department, Free Library of Philadelphia, Woodmere Art Museum, Pennsylvania State University, Library of Congress, Childe Hassam Fund-University of Montana, Fleisher Art Memorial, Friends Central School, and the New Jersey State Museum.