| Description | This collection comprises four folders containing a diverse mixture of printed ephemera such as announcements, private view cards, posters, flyers, postcards, greetings cards, small catalogues, press cuttings and book jackets covering the artist's entire career from 1948 to 2018.
Additionally, there is a folder containing an unbound copy of the illustrated book 'Lines of Thought: the drawings of Desmond Morris', by Silvano Levy, published in conjunction with the retrospective exhibition at the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead, held 12th September to 9th November 2008.
The correspondence is in facsimile form. Chief among this material is correspondence from Conroy Maddox, 1949-2002, which matches the other side of the correspondence in Maddox's archives housed in Tate Archive (TGA 200813). There is also an envelope of facsimile correspondence from other surrealist artists and scholars such as: John Banting, George Melly, ELT Mesens, Joan Miro, and Roland Penrose as well as from other artists like John Bratby and Henry Moore. |
| Administrative History | Desmond Morris is not only known as an artist, but also as a distinguished zoologist, who enthralled millions, around the world, through his book 'The Naked Ape', 1967 and television programmes such as 'Zoo Times'.
When Morris was 14, his father was killed whilst serving in the armed forces, causing Morris to drift towards surrealism. His grandfather William Morris, an enthusiastic Victorian naturalist and founder of the Swindon local newspaper, greatly influenced him during his time living in the town..
In 1946, Morris joined the British Army for two years of national service, becoming a lecturer in fine arts at the Chiseldon Army College. After being demobilised in 1948, he held his first solo exhibition of his paintings at Swindon Arts Centre, and studied zoology at the University of Birmingham. In 1950 he held a surrealist art exhibition, with Joan Miró, at the London Gallery. Similarly, in 1950, Morris wrote and directed two surrealist films, 'Time Flower' and 'The Butterfly and the Pin'. In 1951 he began a doctorate at the Department of Zooogy, University of Oxford on animal behaviour. In 1954, he earned a Doctor of Philosophy for his work on the reproductive behaviour of the ten-spined stickleback.
In 1957 Morris organised an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, showing paintings and drawings composed by chimpanzees. In 1958 he co-organised an exhibition, 'The Lost Image', which compared pictures by infants, human adults, and apes, at the Royal Festival Hall in London. In 1967 Morris spent a year as executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts.
From 1973 to 1981, Morris was a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. In 1979 he undertook a television series for Thames TV, 'The Human Race', followed in 1982 by 'Man Watching in Japan', 'The Animals Road Show' in 1986 and several other series. Throughout this time, Morris exhibited his surrealist art and has written on the subject with his most recent publication, 'Lives of Surrealists', published in 2018 coinciding with a retrospective of works on paper 1948-2018 at the Redfern Gallery, London. |
| Custodial History | The artist, Desmond Morris. |