Bellatrix

Louis worked in series, creating a cohesive body of mature work that is dominated by a small number of themes--Veils, Florals, Unfurleds and Columns. Bellatrix a tour-de-force of the latter series, both in scale and coloristic complexity. What the Columns have in common is a compositional format of parallel vertical bands of color, sometimes touching, others bleeding slightly into each other. Within this self-imposed restriction, Louis was able to wrest a surprising amount of variation and expression. He experimented with the colors, the widths of the bands, and the spaces around them. Bellatrix's gorgeous colors gentle bleed into each other, with each band asserting its own identity, while beautifully coming together to form a rainbow-like wall. Indicative of the artist's work method, the tops of the columns are squared off, with the color pushing upward, like multi-colored flickers of candle light.
Louis's innovative and expressive use of pure color and refinement of his predecessor's staining techniques earned him the praise of MoMA curator William Rubin and critic Clement Greenberg who felt his accomplishments were on the same par as the first generation Abstract Expressionists. Although his supporters lauded Louis' formal rigor and abstract vocabulary, his oeuvre is unabashedly concerned with visual pleasure. "(The paintings) are hedonistic in spirit, decorously cultivating the delectability of color. They did insinuate self, nature and other art in their choice of color but their essential content was immediate and open, buoyant color" (I. Sandler in D. Upright, Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings, A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1985, p. 236).