Northwest School

The Northwest School was an American art movement established in the Seattle area. It flourished in the 1930s–40s. The Big Four 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 from LIFE magazine's 1953 article Mystic Painters of the Northwest, which featured biographies and works of the four artists. The article 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.