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Curving shapes in harvest and lemon yellow float against a background streaked with smoke and charcoal gray in this abstract, horizontal painting. Brushstrokes are visible throughout. Many of the yellow forms are clustered in the center of the composition, and overlaid with black outlines that together make a rough heart shape. The heart form lies on its side with the point of the heart to our right. A few more yellow forms float around this area, including a bottle-shaped form to our left. Black lines are overlaid over some of the forms but not all. One mint-green dot is connected to a yellow, planchet-like shape by a line, near the lower left corner of the painting. The artist signed and dated the painting near the lower right corner, “Louis 48.”

Morris Louis

Sub-Marine, 1948

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 56.52 × 90.17 cm (22 1/4 × 35 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Purchased as the Gift of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson

Accession Number

2017.115.1

Artists / Makers

Morris Louis (painter) American, 1912 - 1962

Image Use

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Inscription

lower right: Louis 48

Provenance

The artist; gift to Mrs. Stuart Hunter, Washington; by descent to private collection, Hillsborough, North Carolina; by descent to private collection, Maryland; purchased 19 December 2017 through (Heather James Fine Art, Palm Desert, California) by NGA.

Associated Names

Heather James Fine Art
Hunter, Stuart Mrs.
Private Collection (NGA Former Owner)

Exhibition History

1949: Fourth Annual Area Exhibition, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, November-December 1949.

1949: Seventeenth Annual Exhibition of Maryland Artists, Baltimore Museum of Art, March-April 1949, no. 63..

Bibliography

1979: Headley, Diane Upright. The Drawings of Morris Louis. Exh. cat. National Collection of Fine Arts (now Smithsonian American Art Museum), Washington; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge. Washington, 1979: 56, repro.

1985: Upright, Diane. Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings, A Catalogue Raisonné. New York, 1985: 36, repro. 134, 194, no. 16.