Morris Louis

Morris Louis Bernstein, known professionally as Morris Louis, was an American painter. During the 1950s he became one of the earliest exponents of Color Field painting. While living in Washington, D.C., Louis, along with Kenneth Noland and other Washington painters, formed an art movement that is known today as the Washington Color School.

Work
Early Work
Morris Louis's early artistic output-comprising his drawings and early paintings-reflects a distinct stylistic evolution rooted in a variety of influences and artistic experiments. Louis's early drawings, primarily executed in pencil, charcoal, pen and ink, and occasionally watercolor, reflect a young artist grappling with the fundamentals of form, composition, and expression. These works are less documented than his later paintings, as many were destroyed or remain in private collections, but surviving examples provide insight into his technical skill and evolving aesthetic.

Major Painting Series (1954-1962)
Morris Louis produced a body of work defined by large-scale canvases and innovative staining techniques using Magna acrylic paints. Between 1954 and his death in 1962, Louis developed a sequence of painting series that marked distinct stylistic phases in his artistic evolution. These major series include the Veils, Florals, Columns, Alephs, Unfurleds, and Stripe paintings. Each group illustrates Louis's deep engagement with color, form, and materiality, and collectively they represent a pioneering contribution to postwar American abstraction.

Veil Series (1954, 1958-1959)
In 1954, Louis produced his mature Veil Paintings, which were characterized by overlapping, superimposed layers of transparent color poured onto and stained into sized or unsized canvas. The Veil Paintings consist of waves of brilliant, curving color-shapes submerged in translucent washes through which separate colors emerge principally at the edges. Although subdued, the resulting color is immensely rich. In another series, the artist used long parallel bands and stripes of pure color arranged side by side in rainbow effects.

The Veil paintings were among Louis's earliest mature works and were initially inspired by a 1953 visit to Helen Frankenthaler's studio with critic Clement Greenberg and fellow painter Kenneth Noland. There, he observed Frankenthaler's stain painting technique, which became foundational to his own process.

In the Veil series, Louis poured heavily diluted Magna acrylic paints onto unprimed canvas, allowing pigment to seep and flow into the fabric, creating overlapping translucent washes. These works were often characterized by vertical bands of subdued color layered in a diaphanous and atmospheric manner. The effect resembled cascading veils of mist or liquid color, hence the name. The earliest Veils were produced in 1954 but the most developed phase occurred between 1958 and 1959. Key works from this period, such as Alpha-Pi (1958), demonstrate a control of gravitational flow and chromatic subtlety that became hallmarks of Louis's technique.

The thinned acrylic paint was allowed to stain the canvas, making the pigment at one with the canvas as opposed to "on top". This conformed to Greenberg's conception of "Modernism" as it made the entire picture plane flat. The painting Tet is a good example of his Veil Paintings.

Florals and Columns (1959-1960)
Following the Veils, Louis explored a more centralized and structured compositional mode in the so-called Florals and Columns. Though these series are less formally designated by the artist, art historians have grouped them based on shared characteristics.

The Florals feature radiating or blooming forms that suggest organic motifs, albeit within a strictly non-representational idiom. These paintings exhibit denser and more opaque paint application compared to the ethereal Veils. In contrast, the Columns series presents vertical arrangements of color, resembling pillars or streaks, often running parallel and terminating sharply at the top or bottom edge of the canvas.

These two interrelated series reflect Louis's transitional efforts between the Veils and more assertive formats that would culminate in the Unfurleds. They also indicate a growing interest in compositional balance and the dynamic between positive and negative space.

Aleph Series (1960-1961)
Named after the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the Aleph series marked a brief but distinctive phase in Louis's practice. These works, produced primarily in 1960, featured centralized arrangements of paint that floated or hovered within the pictorial field, often appearing more contained and symmetrical than earlier series.

The Alephs often employed bold, sometimes opaque colors, and created spatial tension between figure and ground. While the use of staining persisted, the compositions were tighter and more architectonic. The title "Aleph" possibly suggests a foundational or originary theme, aligning with Louis's interest in elemental structures and symbols.

Unfurled Series (1960-1961)
Arguably Louis's most iconic series, the Unfurleds represent a dramatic departure from the more meditative Veils. Created between 1960 and 1961, these works are notable for their large scale and bold, flaring bands of color that stream from both sides of the canvas, leaving a vast unpainted area in the center.

The Unfurleds are divided into two main groups: the Alpha and Delta series. The Alpha-Unfurleds feature arcs of color spilling in from the top edges, while the Delta-Unfurleds typically display diagonal trajectories from the corners. The contrast between the stained areas and untouched canvas emphasized the painting as both object and field, reinforcing the flatness of the picture plane while energizing its surface with dramatic movement.

These works were executed with unprecedented speed and scale, sometimes using specially built ramps and multiple assistants to manage the large canvases. They exemplify Louis's mastery of staining, gravity, and chromatic orchestration.

Stripe Paintings (1961-1962)
In the final stage of his career, Louis turned to a series of vertical Stripe paintings, produced from 1961 until his death in 1962. These works consist of regularly spaced, upright bands of pure color that span the height of the canvas. Each stripe was poured individually, using gravity and capillary action to guide the flow, resulting in remarkably crisp edges and consistent widths.

Unlike the gestural or atmospheric qualities of earlier series, the Stripes are highly ordered and rhythmically structured. Paintings such as Number 99 (1962) emphasize repetition, sequence, and the intrinsic properties of color. The color palette was often more saturated and synthetic in appearance, with an emphasis on juxtaposition and optical interaction.

The Stripe paintings represent a culmination of Louis's career-long concerns with scale, color clarity, and material presence. They also anticipate developments in Minimalism and systemic abstraction that would follow in the later 1960s.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2025