[5] After being moved to a new post, Kaish received an officer's commission and served on missions to Europe on the S.S. Laconia Victory and the S.S. Helen Hunt Jackson.

During these years, Kaish worked and studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, the Istituto statale d'arte, Florence, and the Accademia di Belle Arti, Rome.

While there, the Kaishes forged relationships with a dynamic group of artists, writers and intellectuals, including Philip Guston, Harold Clurman, Dimitri Hadzi and Buckminster Fuller.

Carrying out this work has connected him with many other contemporary artists, including Wolf Kahn, Jane Wilson, Will Barnet and Everett Raymond Kinstler.

In an interview with Ira Goldberg, Director of the Art Students League, Kaish identifies them: the urban architecture visible from his studio windows, the American landscapes, and the figure.

Termed a "latter-day Bonnard" by Emily Genauer, he has been praised as being "richly gifted" in "recording the movements of light across landscapes and figures that celebrate the bounty of nature and the human spirit.

Commenting on a 1967 exhibition, TIME Magazine acclaimed Kaish's rendering of interiors, in which he adapts "the best devices of contemporary painting to limn some timeless verities."

"The Music Room", for example, is described as having "all the gracious intimacy of an old Dutch parlor—open piano, children at play, light bursting through the window in an incendiary display of warmth—and yet its jubilant colors and relaxed brushwork proclaim its modern vintage.

"[12] A sensitive observer of his surroundings, Kaish became fascinated by the panoply of urban architecture visible from the windows of his Upper West Side studio.

A solo exhibition at the Staempfli Gallery in 1984 centered on this theme as well as landscapes, and critics commented on Kaish's ability to infuse the urban with lushness and a sense of the exotic.

[13] In an Arts Magazine review of the show, John Gruen writes, "Morton Kaish's long involvement with the sensuousness of Impressionist color and light as seen in nature continues to be in evidence in a number of large and small garden paintings.

[14] Offering insight into these works, Kaish remarks: "The structures, the hardware and apertures, the light beyond, the graphic notation, and of course, the Lincoln presence speak of a time of loss, change, and inherent resiliency .

[3] His work during this era was featured in a 2012 exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts titled "Figure/Fabric/Fantasy: Selections from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection of Fashion Drawing".

While at FIT, he created and led a summer study abroad program to Florence, Italy where he taught students how to combine traditional techniques used by Renaissance masters with contemporary approaches and materials.

He has also received top honors from these organizations: the Benjamin West Clinedinst Memorial Medal from the Artists' Fellowship and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy.