Medium/Discipline: Painting
Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland
Place of Death: Washington, D.C.
Maryland Affiliation: Born here, Active while in residence
Prominent Theme: Abstract
Subject Headings: Morris Louis Bernstein; Morris Louis
Style/Period: Abstract Expressionism; Color Field
Gender: Male
Race/Ethnicity: White
Biography: Morris Louis, known for his modern abstract paintings done with the color staining technique in the 1950s, was born "Morris Bernstein" and was raised in Baltimore, and studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art on a four-year scholarship he won at age 15 in a state competition. While at MICA, he worked in a conservative figural tradition in which he failed to excel. Nonetheless, the painter Charles Schucker, who was Louis' closest friend at MICA, recalls Louis' "natural facility or talent, a feeling for paint and for color in relation to the surfaces" (Diane Upright, Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, 1985, p. 10).
Morris Louis moved from Baltimore to New York in 1936 and remained there until 1943 in an attempt to make a living as an artist while doing odd jobs to make ends meet. From 1938-42, he registered and worked with the Works Project Administration (WPA) Easel Division of the Federal Art Project; he was a member of the Steering Committee of the Easel Project. He then returned to Baltimore sometime between 1943 and 1947, and in 1947 and was married to a Marcella Siegal after which he lived in suburban Washington, D.C. and taught art. In 1948, Louis began using Magna, an acrylic resin paint that he would use for the rest of his career. E. A. Carmean wrote that Louis combined "aspects of the works of Pollock, Frankenthaler, Motherwell, Newman, Still, Monet, Picasso, Braque and Matisse into his art, all to serve color." (Upright, Introduction, n.p.)
Morris Louis and his wife moved to Washington, D.C. in 1952 where he secured a teaching position at the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts with the help of curator and Maryland artist Jacob Kainen; Louis taught two adult painting classes each week. At the Workshop, Louis met Kenneth Noland, a fellow instructor. Noland introduced Louis both to David Smith, an important Washington sculptor who stressed working in series, and to Clement Greenberg, influential art critic working in New York, who would later show his work and introduce Louis to artists such as Franz Kline and Helen Frankenthaler.
During this period, Louis studied carefully the impressionist and post-impressionist Chester Dale Collection on view at the National Gallery of Art as well as the Phillips Collection. He completed his first stain pictures, by which the pigments he used were soaked up by his absorbent canvas, in 1954; such use of paints was unprecedented. During a trip to New York in 1955, Louis and Noland were exposed to Jackson Pollock's work for the first time, and the pair of artists embarked on a collaborative experimentation of various paint application methods after seeing Pollock's large-scale abstract expressionist canvases. Staining allowed Morris' colors to wash into one another; "he worked with his canvas unstretched in a horizontal plane, sloping and folding it to cause the paint to spread over, or flow directionally across, the unsized and unprimed cotton duck canvas." (Lawrence Alloway, "Notes on Morris Louis," Morris Louis, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1963, n. p.)
Louis retained the flat plane of the canvas to an extent achieved only by Jackson Pollock and the Color Field painters Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still. Regardless of his study of abstract expressionism, he destroyed most of his work from 1955-56 because he was so displeased with the "athletic, rather hectic, handling of the work of these two years" and "returned to a flatter, more continuous, surface." (Alloway, n. p.) In 1957-58, Louis resumed use of earthy colors with forms almost always in the vertical on a horizontal format. Louis created his Stripe painting series that was entirely his own in 1961-62, and which were the last paintings he would execute before his death at age 50 in 1962.
Within a five year period prior to his death, he produced more than 600 canvases, with 400 of those on enormous scale, for which he is most well-known. Often, the scale of his work, measuring up to 15 feet long and 9 feet high, prevented his work from being shown given limited gallery space.
Louis' signature work was embodied in several series: the Veils (1954 and 1958-59), Florals (1959-1960), Unfurleds (1960-61) and Stripes (1961-62). While Louis was moderately successful in selling canvases during his life, at a memorial exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 1963, curator Lawrence Alloway focused on Louis' work from 1954-1959 which had been overlooked when it was displayed in 1959 and 1960 by Clement Greenberg in New York City at French & Company. In 1967, Michael Fried presented Louis' first comprehensive American retrospective.
The work of Morris Louis is represented in major public collections throughout the world including in Germany, Iran, Israel, Japan, Northern Ireland, Switzerland and The Netherlands, and at: The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Gallery of Art, The Phillips Collection and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, all in Washington, D.C.; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, all in New York; The Tate Gallery in London, England; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Education/Training: Baltimore City Public Schools and Baltimore City College, 1918-27; Maryland Institute College of Art, 1927-32
Art-related Employment: muralist assistant to Sam Swerdloff for a commission by the Public Works of Art Project at Hampstead Hill School entitled The History of the Written Word, Baltimore, Maryland, 1934; President, Baltimore Artists' Union, 1935; window decorator, 1936-37; art instructor
Selected References: Alloway, Lawrence. "Notes on Morris Louis," Morris Louis, New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1963.
Carmean, E.A., Jr. Morris Louis: Major Themes and Variations. (Washington: National Gallery of Art), 1976.
Fried, Michael. Morris Louis. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers), 1970.
Headley, Diane Upright. The Drawings of Morris Louis. (Washington, D.C.: National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution), 1979.
Morris Louis 1912-1962: Memorial Exhibition Paintings from 1954-1960. (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), 1963.
Upright, Diane. Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers), 1985.
Maryland Institutions Holding Artworks: The Baltimore Museum of Art
Maryland Institutions Holding Autobiographical Resources, Archives, Personal Papers, Ephemera, or Other Primary Source Material: Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Morris Louis and Morris Louis Estate papers, 1937-1988.
Single-Artist Exhibitions: partial list during Morris' lifetime:
Workshop Art Center Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1953, 1955.
Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1957.
Morris Louis, Workshop Art Center Gallery, Washington, D.C., April 12-30, 1953.
French & Company, curated by Clement Greenberg, New York, 1960.
Bennington College, curated by Clement Greenberg, Vermont, 1960.
Institute of Contemporary Art, London, England, 1960.
Paris at the Galerie Neufville, 1961.
Galleria dell'Ariete, Milan, Italy, 1960.
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, 1961, 1962.
Morris Louis 1912-1962: Memorial Exhibition Paintings from 1954-1960,: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1963.
Multiple-Artist Exhibitions: partial list during his lifetime
With other Maryland artists, A.C.A. Gallery, New York City, 1936-37.
Maryland Artists Annual Exhibition, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1948, 1949, 1950.
Emerging Talent, curated by Clement Greenberg, Kootz Gallery, New York, 1954.
Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, 1957.
Contemporary American Painters, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1957.
The Baltimore Collectors' Exhibition, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1958.
Osaka International Festival in Japan, 1958.
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1958.
Paris at the Galerie Neufville, 1960.
Rome-New York Foundation, Rome, Italy, 1960.
American Abstract Expressionists and Imagists, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1961.
|
|
Learn
about the types of
