Northwest School (art)

The Northwest School was an American art movement established in small-town Skagit County, Washington and the Seattle area. It flourished in the 1930s-40s.

The movement's early participants, and its defining artists, have become known as "the big four": Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves and Mark Tobey. Their work became recognized nationally when LIFE 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 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. The town of Edmonds also figures heavily in the NW School, as Guy Anderson's hometown and studio were in Edmonds, and Morris Graves's home and studio were in nearby Woodway. 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. The media most commonly used by the painters in this group of artists were tempera, oil and gouache on canvas. They also used these media on paper and wood. Morris Graves worked for periods in three dimensional forms, using steel and glass and stone, among other materials. Guy Anderson, whose main medium was oil painting, also made works from bronze and had "collages" around his home of found objects from beach walks and deteriorating metal which he saw beauty in. These forms influenced his painting.

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