Morris Louis (1912-1962)

“The question we always discussed was what to make art about. We didn’t want anything symbolic like say, Gottlieb, or geometric in the old sense of Albers. The Abstract Expressionists painted the appearance or symbol of action, the depiction of gesture. We wanted the appearance to be the result of the process of making it – not necessarily to look like a gesture, but to be the result of a real handling.” (K. Noland quoted in J. Elderfield, Morris Louis, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1986, p. 33)