robert morris

English - English

Definition of robert morris in English English dictionary: born Jan. 31, 1734, Liverpool, Merseyside, Eng. died May 8, 1806, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S. British-born American financier and politician. He immigrated to join his father in Maryland in 1747 and entered a Philadelphia mercantile firm the following year. As a member of the Continental Congress in the American Revolution, he practically controlled the financial operations of the war from 1776 to 1778, borrowing money from the French, requisitioning from the states, and even advancing money from his own pocket. He established the Bank of North America (1781) and served as U.S. superintendent of finance (1781-84) under the Articles of Confederation. He was a delegate to the Annapolis Convention and the Constitutional Convention and served in the U.S. Senate (1789-95). After investing heavily in land speculation, he went bankrupt and spent more than three years in a debtors' prison before his release in 1801. born Feb. 9, 1931, Kansas City, Mo., U.S. U.S. artist. His first one-man exhibition of paintings was held in San Francisco in 1957. In 1960, while living in New York City, he began producing large, monochromatic geometric sculptures, groups of which he exhibited in specific spatial relationships. His work of this period greatly affected the Minimalist movement, which sought to reduce art to its essence by eliminating personal expression and historical allusion. From the late 1960s, however, Morris moved toward a more spontaneous, if anonymous, expressiveness. He experimented in a wide variety of forms, including the "happening"; "dispersal pieces," in which materials were strewn in apparent randomness on the gallery floor; and environmental projects. His work of the 1970s showed a preoccupation with paradoxes of mental and physical imprisonment

robert morris