Image: Debra Force Fine Art, New York
George L.K. Morris’s ‘Airplane Hanger’, an oil painting made between 1942 and 1945, is included in ‘Summertime and All That Jazz’, a group exhibition at Debra Force Fine Art in New York. The exhibition runs from July 10 through September 11, 2026, at the gallery’s space at 13 East 69th Street, Suite 4F.
Measuring 14 by 18 inches, the work presents an industrial subject through the geometric language associated with Morris’s painting. Thick black lines define the architectural outlines of an airplane hangar on all four sides of the canvas, with some lines extending beyond the picture plane. Inside this framework, mechanical and geometric forms overlap, suggesting different components of an aircraft.
The composition includes two sets of black propellers that appear to float near the centre, along with a partially obscured red star—possibly a logo—and a round window. The work reflects Morris’s interest in transforming American urban and industrial imagery into Cubist forms, a direction also evident in his paintings on transportation and infrastructure.
Morris, who lived from 1905 to 1975, was a Geometric Abstractionist active in New York City from 1930 until his death. After graduating from Yale University in 1928, where he studied art and literature, he attended the Art Students League and the Académie Moderne in Paris. His artistic career developed alongside work as a critical writer, and he became an outspoken advocate of American abstract art.
His Paris education brought him into contact with the structural order of Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant, with whom he studied at the Académie Moderne. During subsequent trips to Paris and London, Morris befriended Albert Eugene Gallatin. In 1936, he was among the founding members of American Abstract Artists, an organisation established to promote abstract art and provide exhibition opportunities at a time when the movement faced strong critical resistance.
Morris’s close circle included his wife, the artist Suzy Frelinghuysen, as well as Gallatin and Charles Green Shaw. Together, they were identified within American Abstract Artists as the ‘Park Avenue Cubists’, a reference to their privileged backgrounds. ‘Summertime and All That Jazz’ places ‘Airplane Hanger’ alongside works by Milton Avery, Romare Bearden, Nell Blaine, Charles Burchfield, Marsden Hartley, Robert Henri, Leon Kroll, Pegi Nicol MacLeod, Herman Maril, John Marin, Alfred Maurer, Hayward Oubre, Guy Pène du Bois, Jane Piper, Fairfield Porter, Rolph Scarlett and Andrew Wyeth, among others. Morris’s related transportation paintings include ‘IRT’, dated 1939–1953 and held by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and ‘Nautical Composition’, dated 1937–1942 and held by the Whitney Museum of American Art.
