News and Press

Post Office Announces New Postal Stamps featuring Ojibwa Artist George Morrison

From the United States Postal Service - November 2, 2021

The U.S. Postal Service has announced several new stamps to be issued in 2022. "The new 2022 stamps are miniature works of art, designed to be educational and appeal to collectors and pen pals around the world," said USPS Stamp Services Director William Gicker. "As always, the program offers a variety of subjects celebrating American culture and history. The vivid colors and unique designs of this year's selections will add a special touch of beauty on your envelopes."

One of the nation's greatest modernist artists and a founding figure of Native American modernism, George Morrison (1919–2000) challenged prevailing ideas of what Native American art should be, arguing that an artist's identity can exist independently from the nature of the art he creates. Morrison is best known for his abstract landscapes and monumental wood collages. A pane of 20 colorful stamps showcases five of Morrison's artworks. The selvage features a photograph of the artist in his home studio. Antonio Alcalá was the art director and designer for this stamp pane.

Morrison was a member of the Grand Portage Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. He was born in 1919 in Chippewa City, Cook County, Minnesota, near the Grand Portage Indian Reservation.[3] Morrison was one of 12 children in a poor household. His father worked as a trapper and used his fluent knowledge of the Ojibwe language to interpret court proceedings. Morrison briefly attended a Native American boarding school in Hayward, Wisconsin.[4] Due to poor health, Morrison returned to Minnesota and was for a time a Native American sanatorium in Onigum, Minnesota and the Gillette State Hospital for Crippled Children in St. Paul.[3] He attended Grand Marais High School, graduating in 1938, and then the Minnesota School of Art, now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, graduating in 1943.[1]