At 150, Jo Mora gets his due across Monterey County
Exhibitions in Monterey and Salinas, plus a Carmel lecture, mark the 150th birthday of the artist of the American West.
Jo Mora, the Uruguayan-born artist who became one of the great visual chroniclers of the American West, was born 150 years ago this year. Monterey County, where he lived and worked, is marking the occasion with exhibitions in Monterey and Salinas and a lecture in Carmel.
"Jo Mora and Family Through the Lens of Lewis Josselyn" is on view at the Monterey History and Art Association at the Stanton Center, 5 Custom House Plaza in Monterey. The exhibition opened Sept. 26 and runs through the end of the year.
In Salinas, "Like an Octopus: Eight Segments of Jo Mora's Life and Career" is showing at the National Steinbeck Center, One Main Street. A reception was held Sept. 25. A smaller exhibit of Mora's authorial work is also on view at the John Steinbeck Library in Salinas through at least October.
Carmel gets its own Mora moment with a lecture by Peter Hiller, "The Life of Jo Mora in Monterey County and Carmel," at Carpenter Hall at the Sunset Center. The talk coincides with the Book Club of California's publication of Hiller's Mora biography.
Mora (1876-1947) moved through the worlds of illustration, sculpture, cartography and architecture, but his enduring subject was the West: its vaqueros, missions, and Native peoples, rendered with a draftsman's precision and a storyteller's warmth. A century and a half after his birth, the county he called home is still looking closely at what he saw.
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