Earth

Morris Louis Earth from 1959 is an acrylic on canvas painting that exemplifies the Washington Color School painters development of the stain painting technique, in which thinned acrylic paint is poured onto unsized canvas and allowed to soak into the fabric, creating chromatic veils that appear to hover at the surface of the painting rather than sitting on top of it. Louis, who developed his mature style after seeing Helen Frankenthalers Mountains and Sea in 1953, spent the remaining decade of his life producing a body of work in which color is freed from the constraints of gesture and composition to become the primary content of the painting. Earth, with its title suggesting both the planet and the material of the ground beneath our feet, presents bands of color that flow down the canvas in vertical rivulets that suggest both geological strata and the force of gravity pulling the paint toward the ground. The acrylic medium, thinned to the consistency of water and poured directly onto the canvas, creates the stained and soaked surfaces that give Louis paintings their characteristic chromatic intensity and atmospheric depth, in which color seems to emanate from within the canvas rather than being applied to its surface. The year 1959 places this painting in the period of Louis most productive work, when he was producing the series of veil and unfurled paintings that are now considered his masterpieces.

Louis stain paintings are foundational works in the history of Color Field painting, demonstrating that color could be freed from the constraints of gesture and composition to become the primary content of painting. Earth influenced the development of Lyrical Abstraction, Post-Painterly Abstraction, and the broader tradition of chromatic painting.

A 1959 acrylic stain painting by Louis titled Earth, with vertical rivulets of thinned acrylic soaked into unsized canvas creating chromatic veils that hover at the surface, freeing color from gesture and composition to become the primary content of painting.