Number 99 - Morris Louis

A classic example of Color Field painting by Morris Louis, featuring overlapping, translucent bands of poured acrylic resin on canvas.

Morris Louis was a central figure in the Washington Color School, a group of artists who moved away from the gestural brushwork of Abstract Expressionism towards a focus on the properties of colour and the physical surface of the canvas. Number 99 is an example of his technique involving the application of Magna, an acrylic resin paint, thinned to a consistency that allowed it to soak directly into the unprimed fabric.

In this work, the paint is poured and manipulated to create overlapping bands of colour. Because the pigment is absorbed by the canvas rather than sitting on top of it, the image maintains a flat, unified surface. The transparency of the layers allows for optical mixing where colours cross, creating secondary hues and varying levels of opacity. The composition lacks a traditional centre, instead spreading the colour across the entire field of the canvas. This approach removes the artist's hand from the final mark, prioritising the interaction between the liquid medium and the weave of the support.

Louis often tilted his canvases to control the flow of the paint, a method that resulted in the soft, blurred edges seen in these forms. By avoiding the texture of traditional oil paint, he achieved a clarity of tone that defines his contribution to mid-century American art. The work functions as a study in the behaviour of liquid colour, where the boundaries between individual shapes become permeable. This piece demonstrates the artist's interest in the relationship between the material qualities of paint and the two-dimensional plane of the canvas, resulting in a composition that relies on the interaction of light and pigment rather than representational form.