Desmond Morris has been painting for over 65 years. He held his first exhibition in 1948 and his most recent in 2015. Morris has had an unusual double career as an artist and a zoologist specializing in animal and human behavior, in which field he has published some 50 books. In each sphere he has also acted as an institutional director, in the case of the arts being director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1967-8. In the 1970s he was also a research fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. He was trained as a scientist, and began painting in the mid 1940s. While working at Birmingham University he met the painter Conroy Maddox (born 1912), who organised in Birmingham the last group of Surrealist artists in Britain, which Morris joined. He had earlier admired Surrealist writing, and in Paris in 1948 saw an exhibition of Roberto Matta (born 1911). After the success of his book The Naked Ape in 1967 he was able to give more time to painting, and exhibited frequently in the 1970s. Morris wrote in 1974 of his spheres of activity: an objective scientist who paints pictures in a highly subjective manner can find himself, mentally, in an attractive position. By giving his subjective fantasies full expression in paint, he can then be unrestrainedly and remorselessly objective in his scientific work… It is true that my paintings are very biomorphic, very preoccupied with biological shapes, and that my biological writings are largely concerned with visual patterns of behaviour (quoted in Levy, p.204-5). (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/morris-the-arena-t07646) Desmond John Morris (born 24 January 1928); English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology. He is known for his 1967 book The Naked Ape, and for his television programmes such as Zoo Time. ...In 1948, Morris had his first one-man showing of his paintings, at Swindon Art Centre. In 1950 he... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Morris) undefined

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