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Artist or Maker: Morris Louis (1912-1962)

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Exhibited: San Francisco Museum of Art,
Contemporary Painting and Sculpture from Bay Area Collections
, September-October 1968.
Berkeley, University of California Art Museum,
Art from the University Community
, September 1970, no. 475.
Los Angeles, University of California Art Galleries,
Color
, February-March 1970, p. 20 (illustrated in color).
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
The Twentieth Century
, December 1984-February 1985.
New York, Museum of Modern Art; Fort Worth Art Museum and Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,
Morris Louis
, October 1986-July 1987.

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Notes: PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF SALLY LILIENTHAL


"If his technique of pouring paint down the canvas broke with the tradition of gestural brushwork, the Veils nevertheless remain as closely related in feeling to the complex, brushed surfaces of the action painters as they are to the evenly applied, flat color areas and geometricized forms of painting in the 60s. This technique was simply a means of achieving a desired effect; as such, it was devoid of the metaphysical significance that the action painters accorded to painting as an act of heroic self expression. The relationship between the artist and his materials, the flow of thinned paint over the canvas surface, and the manner in which it soaked into and spread through the fibers, could be only partially controlled. Ultimately, Louis's paintings, because of this quasi-accidental process, become self contained, organic entities" (D. Swanson, Morris Louis: The Veil Cycle, exh. cat., Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1977, p. 13).