Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler – From explorers to protagonists of American Color Field Painting
In 1959, a year after the creation of “Dalet Chet,” Morris Louis, whose magnificent “Veil Paintings” are regarded as icons of American Color Field Painting, became famous almost overnight. It was one of the most pivotal moments of his career when Clement Greenberg, the American art critic renowned for promoting and championing postwar abstract art, was deeply impressed by this large-scale painting. At the time, it was incredibly innovative in terms of composition and color application. Following an exhibition at French & Company in New York, Greenberg became Louis’s chief patron. At that time, Morris Louis was 46 years old and, tragically, had only three years left to live. Born in Baltimore, the artist had graduated from the Maryland Institute of Fine and Applied Arts as early as 1932; however, his style remained disparate until 1953, and during those years, he also drew on figurative tendencies, including Jackson Pollock’s Action Painting. Until 1953, however, Louis remained an artist in search of his voice, finding his characteristic style only through a pivotal experience: a visit to Helen Frankenthaler’s New York studio, undertaken during a joint stay with his artist friend Kenneth Noland.
In Frankenthaler’s New York studio, they encountered not only the gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism, but also her innovative soak-stain technique. Greenberg encouraged what he saw as a promising artistic exchange among Morris Louis, his friend Kenneth Noland, and Helen Frankenthaler. Greenberg would be proven right once again, for this exchange and the sight of Frankenthaler’s famous composition “Mountains and Sea” (1952, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), one of the first paintings in her famous soak-stain technique, would go on to have a decisive influence not only on Kenneth Noland but also on Morris Louis. The artist had merely partially saturated the nearly 2.20 x 3-meter unprimed canvas surface with heavily diluted oil paint, thereby not applying the paint to the canvas but rather fusing the clearly visible fabric texture with the paint applied in a glazing manner. This technical achievement became a key experience for Morris Louis, prompting him to start his famous series of “Veil Paintings” immediately afterward—a series in which he spread heavily diluted acrylic paint across the canvas in soft veils of color. The present work is a prime example from this series.

“Veil Paintings” – Louis' iconic depictions of a spiritual liberation of color
Louis’ “Veil Paintings,” created primarily in 1958–59, are widely regarded as the pivotal moment and pinnacle of his career, marking the beginning of his mature painting practice—which lasted a mere eight years—and came to an abrupt end with his untimely death at the age of 49 in 1962. In this condensed phase, however, Louis created something monumental with his wall-filling, gently poured color experiments on unprimed canvas: He liberated the color and, with it, abstract painting from contour, blending the heavily diluted acrylic paint poured onto the canvas layer by layer with the canvas itself in an inimitably gentle and contourless manner. With these iconic creations, Louis has established a completely new painterly aesthetic in which color extends into the space in a pure, weightless, and ethereal manner. Before these wall-filling, mysteriously ethereal worlds of color, one can truly immerse oneself in the color and its infinite nuances, shades, and superimpositions.

This monumental work, “Dalet Chet,” also captivates with its subtly nuanced, natural colors—ranging from green and ochre to warm, earthy reds—which are accentuated and rhythmicized by areas of unpainted canvas. Louis was born into a Russian-Jewish immigrant family, and the Hebrew title “Dalet Chet” refers to a connection between the earthly and the spiritual, the physical and the metaphysical. Thus, “Dalet Chet” is to be read as a symbol for the “Veil Paintings,” which, thanks to their captivating aura, take us into an abstract, spiritually otherworldly realm.
With his iconic “Veil Paintings”—sensual, spiritual works that are overwhelming in their monumental dimensions—Louis made an important contribution to American post-war art and to contemporary abstract painting. However, widespread public interest in Louis’ bold and fascinatingly innovative painting, as well as its international recognition, did not begin until after his untimely death in the 1960s and was significantly shaped by Clement Greenberg in the years that followed. It was Greenberg who, in December 1986, gave a lecture on Louis’ work on the occasion of the major Morris Louis exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. The accompanying catalog stated the following: "Morris Louis created a unique late form of Abstract Expressionism, which he then radically transformed to pave the way for the minimalist art of the 1960s. The radiant paintings of his mature period are, in their abstraction, as compelling and radical as no other work in American art. ‘At the height of his powers,’ wrote John Elderfield, Louis’s art achieved a sense of ‘liberation through the senses … the state to which the best of modern painting aspires.’” (quoted from: Exhibition catalog Morris Louis, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1986, blurb). It is therefore not surprising that Morris Louis’s outstanding works are found in leading museums and private collections worldwide, and that they are considered extreme rarities on the European auction market. [JS]