Earth

Morris LouisWW-1959-133508

1959·Acrylic on canvas·234.6 × 352.4 cm (92 3/8 × 138 3/4 in.)

Morris Louis lived and worked in and aroundWashington, D.C., where he was relatively isolated from developments in the New York art world. The goal of his art, in which color is both the vehicle and the content, was to realize the complete fusion of foreground and background, hue and texture. Louis’s saturated stripes and misty veils of color were achieved through a careful process of staining sheets of raw canvas, hung from vertical scaffolding, with thin washes of plastic-based paints. The artist allowed the paint to move over the canvas, guiding its flow with the curves of the loose canvas and a cloth-covered stick. Epic in size, Earth is part of the series Bronze Veils, paintings that Louis inverted after they were completed so that the paint appears to flow from bottom to top.

Catalogue

Year: 1959
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 234.6 × 352.4 cm (92 3/8 × 138 3/4 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Morris Louis

Artist

Morris Louis

Painting

Morris Louis was an American abstract painter who pioneered the technique of pouring and staining diluted acrylic paint directly onto unprimed canvas, creating luminous veils of color that seemed to float within the weave itself. Working in Washington, D.C., he developed his signature approach in the 1950s, moving away from gestural abstraction toward a practice centered on the optical properties of pigment and ground. His paintings, often organized into series such as the Veils and Florals, eschew both representation and compositional hierarchy, instead treating color saturation and transparency as primary formal concerns. Louis died in 1962 at age fifty, his influence on color field painting and subsequent abstract practices secured despite his brief career.

Baltimore, United States

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