Morris Louis was born on November 28, 1912 in Baltimore, Maryland with the original name of Morris Louis Bernstein. Louis died at 49 years old on September 7, 1962 in Washington, DC from lung cancer thought to be caused by long-term exposure to paint vapors. His birth name was Morris Louis Bernstein until he dropped his last name in 1938. Louis changed his name (dropping the Bernstein) in 1938. People described him as a subdued, quiet, and contemplative. He didn’t talk to others unless they were thoughtful people. He entered a state competition at the age of fifteen, where he won a four-year scholarship to the Maryland Institute of Fine and Applied Arts. He was awarded a diploma by the Fine Arts Department in June 1932. After he graduated he held a variety of odd jobs such as peeling vegetables for an Italian restaurant, folding clothes in a laundry, mowing grass in a cemetery, and helping his pharmacist brother. He was associated with four different artists movements which were, Color Field Painting, Abstract Expressionism, Post-Painterly Abstraction, and Washington Color School. Louis was known to work on his art practice everyday for around 8-9 hours straight. Louis was greatly influenced by Max Beckmann. Louis reportedly did many paintings in Beckmann’s style, including a triptych, which was never found. Beckmann was known as an expressionist painter even though he rejected the movement as well as the term. He had a very figurative style of painting. Louis’ first solo exhibition was in Washington, D.C. at the Workshop Art Center Gallery in 1953 and consisted of 16 paintings and collages, plus drawings. From 1937 to the present date Louis’ work has been included in 528 different exhibitions. His work was only included in 51 exhibitions while he was still alive. When Morris Louis died in September 1962, his paintings had just begun to attract widespread interest and critical attention. Although he had exhibited on a fairly regular basis since 1953, more than four hundred paintings he produced between 1953 and his death remained stored on rolls in his Washington home.