Morris Louis

Estate of the artist (ML380)
André Emmerich Gallery, Inc., New York
Mrs. Samuel P. Reed, New York
Sotheby's New York, May 2, 1988, lot 25
Margo Leavin Gallery, New York (acquired from the above)
Riva Yares Gallery, Scottsdale
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Morris Louis: Unfurled Paintings to 1960, February - March, 1970, n. p., illustrated in color
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Structure of Color, February - April, 1971

Paul Richard, "Morris Louis' Painful Path to Greatness", Washington Post, December 6, 1973, p. C3, illustrated in color
Diane Upright, Morris Louis: the Complete Paintings, a Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1985, cat. no. 387, p. 168, illustrated in color

 

This painting is in very good condition. For further information, a condition report has been prepared by Terrence Mahon, Painting Conservator, New York City Please contact the Contemporary Art department at 212-606-7254 to receive this report. This work is unframed.
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Almost half of a century after Morris Louis died, the monumental paintings executed by this eminent co-founder of the Washington Color Field movement appear as timeless as the moment he first poured luminous rivulets of paint across an unprimed matrix.  The premise to Louis' resplendent Gamma Tau was born out of his fastidious methodology that explored methods of paint application which preserved the picture-plane as a two-dimensional surface.  His paintings would address formalist concerns of the canvas surface as an expansive, flat, non-figural field of pure form, line and color.

Louis developed a language of pure art within the realm of serial painting. Spanning the years from 1934 to 1953, Louis experimented with the figure, form and abstraction only to unleash his first major series of Veil paintings in 1954.  Following this definitive development came the jubilant and awe-inspiring Florals, leading to his Column paintings and then the Unfurleds of which the present painting proudly belongs.  Louis' illustriously commercial Stripe paintings began next in 1961, one year before his untimely death.  A stream of artistic consciousness begun in 1954 with the Veils marked an eight year span that constituted his artistic maturity and the articulation of his singular vision.

The early 1960s in the New York art world was an unparalleled time as the primacy of Abstract Expressionists was challenged for the first time by the works of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and ultimately the Pop artists Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol.  However, Louis remained focused on his own aesthetic, and continued an artistic dialogue with luminaries such Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman and Helen Frankenthaler.  He was influenced by the large scale and emotional responses to color of Abstract Expressionism and was particularly impressed with the possibilities inherent in Frankenthaler's staining techniques.   

In April 1953, Louis along with good friend and fellow Color Field artist, Kenneth Noland and renowned art critic, Clement Greenberg visited the studio of Helen Frankenthaler to view her masterpiece, Mountain and Sea (after which Louis destroyed most of his paintings from this year.)  Louis was struck by Frankenthaler's ability to manipulate her medium and literally "stain" the canvas with ethereal forms of color and shape with a lightness that would become her early crowning achievement within the male dominated world of Abstract Expressionism.  Deeply moved and inspired by what he saw there, Louis then began a journey both artistically and practically that would define his own truth as an artist, painter and independent visionary.

Prior to the inception of the Unfurled paintings in the late summer/early fall of 1960, Louis grew concerned about the quality of his canvases and decided to use a more porous and higher grade of cotton duct material.  As finances allowed, he ordered larger quantities to ensure a level of consistency previously unmatched in his medium.  The increased porousness allowed the Magna to permeate the canvas quickly to produce the crisp contours so vital to most of the Unfurled and subsequent Stripe paintings.  Another significant change in the artist's choice of medium was his decision to only use the Magna paint in its purest form.  Louis never mixed his paints, rather choosing to pour the pure hues directly from the container; the only blending of color arose from occasional bleeding and overlapping at the edges of the pours.  This bleeding effect, as seen mostly in his earlier paintings from this series, is due to an excess of turpentine thinner in which the pigment feathers out along the edges of the pour; this was especially true of the black, the likely reason that black appears in only a few Unfurleds and never in the Stripes.  On the whole, however, the Unfurled series displays an absolute ease and control of the paint application process.  Louis poured rivulets across lengths of ten feet or more without resin or turpentine bleeds, while retaining the full diffusion and intensity of colors. 

Diane Upright notes that "like the Veils, the Unfurleds appear remarkably consistent and fully resolved relative to the work that preceded them.  The overwhelming impact of this series stems as much from its simplicity of composition as from the complexity of its effect.  The basic pictorial components are readily described: two triangular zones of color rivulets confront each other across a huge center wedge of intensely white, unpainted canvas.  With the directness and seeming inevitability so often characteristic of masterpieces, the Unfurleds provided Louis with the ideal framework in which to exploit his urge toward active draftsmanship and colorism without sacrificing structural coherence, a problem that had long preoccupied him."  (D. Upright,  Morris Louis, the Complete Paintings: a Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1985, p. 22)  

Very little is known or has been written about Morris Louis, the man.  He hardly ever spoke to anyone about his art, not even his wife.   How did a painter of so few words achieve the powerful and timeless qualities of pure color, form and line within the grandiloquent and overly charged world of Contemporary Art?  Forty five years after his death, it remains noteworthy that an artist who quietly filled his enormous canvases with veils and rivulets of pure color, empowers the mid Twentieth-Century art world with the triumph that is pure Color Field painting.