Broad Turning

Morris Louis

1958

Acrylic on canvas

Dallas Museum of Art

Morris Louis created this painting without using a paintbrush. Instead, he applied extremely diluted, thinned acrylic paint to an unprimed and unstretched canvas, allowing the liquid to flow over the inclined surface in effects sometimes suggestive of translucent color veils. Although his flat, thin pigment is at times modulated in billowing and subtle tones, the Veil paintings, as they are often referred to, also comprise waves of brilliant, curving color, submerged in translucent washes that can be discerned separately, primarily along the top and edges of the canvas. Louis had to work quickly and intentionally in his small studio