Morris Louis

Previous owner: André Emmerich Gallery, New York, 1992;
private collection, Marcella Brenner; André Emmerich Gallery, New York; private collection, Hans Neuendorf
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Hans Neumann, Berlin, 2013

Solo exhibitions:
2019
On permanent loan to Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden
1992
‘Morris Louis, Veils and Variations’, André Emmerich Gallery, New York, USA
1960
‘Morris Louis’, French & Company, New York, USA

The work Loom by Morris Louis stands as a transition between two large groups of works, the Veils (see Dalet Sin, 1958) and the Unfurled Paintings (see Gamma Epsilon, 1960), both of which are represented with one work each in the Reinhard Ernst Collection. In the characteristic soak-stain painting technique, the diluted paint seeps into unprimed canvas. Although this painting technique is associated with Morris Louis, he adapted it from Helen Frankenthaler.

Louis began teaching at the Washington Workshop Center of the Arts when he and his wife moved to Washington in 1952. It was there that he met fellow teacher Kenneth Noland, twelve years his junior. During their first stay together in New York in April 1953, Clement Greenberg invited them to visit Frankenthaler’s studio. They were deeply impressed by her first soak-stain paintings, such as Mountains and Sea (1952). Both artists went on to further develop Frankenthaler’s technique and were soon celebrated as pioneers of a new art movement called color-field-painting thanks to their unique technique. Greenberg played a decisive role as an advocate, critical companion and mediator for Louis’ career: he included Louis’ works in an exhibition at French & Company in New York for the first time in 1959 and also exhibited Loom there a year later. Despite initial successes, Morris Louis rented a studio at this time that was so small that he could only work on one canvas at a time.

From 1947 onwards, Louis and Kenneth Noland were among the artists who worked with Leonard Bocour’s new acrylic resin-based Magna paint. Bocour developed a special version of Magna for the two painters with a consistency similar to maple syrup and which was easier to thin. Morris Louis never mixed the Magna colours but used the paint directly from the can, diluted it with turpentine then poured it straight onto the canvas lying on the floor. The basic pictorial components are easy to describe: In Loom, two triangular fields of colour – one orange, the other red – frame a wedge-shaped, unpainted open space in their centre. In Loom, the manner in which the paint was applied and the composition of the work clearly prepared the way for the Unfurleds series to which Gamma Epsilon (1960) belongs.