Jevel Demikovski (March 27, 1922 – February 4, 2007), known professionally as Jules Olitski, was an American painter,
printmaker
Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proce ...
, and sculptor.
Early life
Olitski was born Jevel Demikovsky in
Snovsk
Snovsk ( uk, Сновськ ) is a city in Koriukivka Raion, Chernihiv Oblast (province) of Ukraine. Population: It hosts the administration of Snovsk urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. The population was 12,315 in 2001.
Name
The ...
, in
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( uk, Украї́нська Радя́нська Соціалісти́чна Респу́бліка, ; russian: Украи́нская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респ ...
(now
Chernihiv Oblast
Chernihiv Oblast ( uk, Черні́гівська о́бласть, translit=Chernihivska oblast; also referred to as Chernihivshchyna, uk, Черні́гівщина, translit=Chernihivshchyna) is an oblast (province) of northern Ukraine. T ...
,
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...
), a few months after his father, a commissar, was executed by the Soviet government. He emigrated to the United States in 1923 with his mother and grandmother and settled in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
. His grandmother cared for him while his mother worked to support the family. In 1926 his mother married Hyman Olitsky (note "y" ending), a widower with two sons. A daughter was born in 1930.
Education
Olitski showed an aptitude for
drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayo ...
and by 1935 was taking occasional art classes in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
. He attended public schools in New York, winning an art prize upon his graduation from high school. At an exhibit of the work of some of the great masters at the
New York World's Fair in 1939 he was very impressed by
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally cons ...
's
portrait
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this ...
s. Subsequently he won a scholarship to study art at
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was founded in 1887 ...
and was admitted to the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the ...
in New York. His education continued at
Beaux Arts Institute in New York from 1940-42.
After discharge from the Army in 1945, Olitski married and stayed with Leo and Alma Gershenson in
Asheville, NC
Asheville ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most populous ci ...
. After some time, following Leo's advice, he traveled to
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...
. He later returned to New York, and then in the late 40s went to
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
on the
G.I. Bill where he studied at the
Ossip Zadkine School and the
Académie de la Grande Chaumière
The Académie de la Grande Chaumière is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France.
History
The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the Acad� ...
, both in Paris. In Paris he saw the European modern masters and engaged in a severe self-analysis, which involved painting while blindfolded to remove himself from all of his customary habits and facility. In 1951 in Paris Olitski presented his first one-man show.
Having returned to New York in 1951, Olitski received his
B.A. in 1952 and his
M.A. in 1954 in Art Education, both from
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, th ...
Career
Olitski had his first one-person show at
Galerie Huit
Galerie Huit was an art collective and gallery established by American artists in Paris in 1950. During the mid-twentieth century American artists traveled and lived in Paris to study and make art. Many of the male American artists were able ...
, Paris in 1951. He returned to New York, reacting against the color and imagery of his Paris works, he began to paint
monochromatic
A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochro ...
pictures with empty centers. He divorced and began exhibiting in group shows, and by 1956 was remarried and had joined the faculty of
C. W. Post College
LIU Post (formally, the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, and often referred to as C.W. Post) is a private university in Brookville, New York. It is the largest campus of the private Long Island University system.
The campus is named ...
on
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United States and the 18 ...
. In 1958 he had his first New York one-person show, at the Zodiac Room of the
Alexander Iolas
Alexander Iolas (March 26, 1908 – June 8, 1987) was an Egyptian-born Greek-American art gallerist and an significant collector of modern art works, who advanced the careers of René Magritte and many other artists. He established the modern mode ...
Gallery, and met
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formali ...
, who exhibited Olitski's paintings in a large solo show at French & Company in May 1959.
In 1960 Olitski abruptly moved away from the heavily encrusted abstract surfaces he had evolved and began to stain the canvas with large areas of thin, brightly colored dyes. These were shown at a second French & Co. exhibit, in April 1961, and he was asked to join the Poindexter Gallery, where he had several exhibitions. Thereafter he exhibited in numerous venues, won a prize at the
Carnegie International
The Carnegie International is a North American exhibition of contemporary art from around the globe. It was first organized at the behest of industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie on November 5, 1896 in Pittsburgh. Carnegie established th ...
and began to be collected by museums.
By 1965 Olitski had evolved a radically innovative technique of laying down atmospheric blankets of colored spray on the canvas, marked at first by barely discernible straight-edged value changes near the edge of the picture and later by
acrylic paint
Acrylic paint is a fast-drying paint made of pigment suspended in acrylic polymer emulsion and plasticizers, silicone oils, defoamers, stabilizers, or metal soaps. Most acrylic paints are water-based, but become water-resistant when dry. ...
dragged along portions of the edge. He exhibited internationally in the late 1960s and was selected as one of four artists to represent the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
at the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
in 1966. In 1969 he was invited to exhibit large, aluminum,
spray-painted sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...
s at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
becoming the first living
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...
to be given a one-person exhibition there.
He taught at
Bennington College from 1963 to 1967.
In the 1970s Olitski returned to the thick
impasto surfaces which characterized his work in the 50s but with innovative techniques that took advantage of the newly improved
polymer
A polymer (; Greek '' poly-'', "many" + '' -mer'', "part")
is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic a ...
and gel acrylic mediums. In 1994 he was elected into the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the ...
.
His late works from 2001 through January 2007 are characterized by intensely colored orbs that can evoke
landscape
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...
or
skyscape. As Norman L. Kleeblat states in his essay in the catalog that accompanies the exhibition ''Jules Olitski-The Late Paintings-A Celebration,'' at Knoedler and Company Nov 2007-Jan 2008. ''"The intensity of Olitski's colors can feel jarring when each colored area is observed separately. But the artist is a master of unlikely clashes of intense and artificial-looking colors recalling
Delacroix."''.
Olitski had over 150 one-person exhibitions in his lifetime and is represented in museums worldwide. He has received
honorary doctorates
An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...
from the
University of Hartford
The University of Hartford (UHart) is a private university in West Hartford, Connecticut. Its main campus extends into neighboring Hartford and Bloomfield. The university attracts students from 48 states and 43 countries. The university and ...
,
Keene State College
Keene State College is a public liberal arts college in Keene, New Hampshire. It is part of the University System of New Hampshire and the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges. Founded in 1909 as a teacher's college (originally, Keene No ...
, and
Southern New Hampshire University.
The Estate of Jules Olitski is represented by YaresArt.
Personal life
Olitski lived and worked in studios in
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...
and
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...
and exhibited regularly until his death from
cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
in 2007, aged 84.
Family
1945. Marries Gladys Katz. They have one daughter, Eve. Div. circa 1955.
1956. Marries Andrea Hill Pearce. They have one daughter, Lauren. Div. circa 1974.
1980. Marries Joan C. Gorby (aka Kristina).
References
*''Jules Olitski,'' catalog for the exhibition at the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...
,1973. Introduction by
Kenworth Moffett; Chronology by Elinor L. Woron
*''Jules Olitski'', by Kenworth Moffett. pub. by Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1981, monograph, 242 pages
*''Jules Olitski'', Catalog for the retrospective exhibition at the Buschlen-Mowatt Gallery,
Vancouver, BC, 1989, Preface by Barrie Mowatt, Introduction by
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formali ...
, Essays by Jules Olitski.
*''Jules Olitski'', The New Hampshire Exhibits, Autumn, 2003. Edited by Lauren Poster, pub. Jan 2005 by Four Forty, Marlboro VT 96 pages 115 color plates. Essay "Paths" by Jim Walsh and DVD interview for The Front Porch NH Public Radio with John Walters
*''A Culmination of Contradictions: Jules Olitski's Last Decade"'' by Norman L. Kleeblatt, The Susan and Elihu Rose Chief Curator at The Jewish Museum, excerpt from essay "Jules Olitski The Late Paintings A Celebration" Nov 8, 2007-Jan 5, 2008 Knoedler & Company, New York
Criticism
* January 28, 2021 review
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
art critic, Roberta Smith writes "The artist’s earliest Color Field paintings, with their indomitable colors, austere compositions and wild pictorial spaces, are among the movement’s signal achievements.
The Great Beginning of Jules Olitski
Roberta Smith, New York Times
January 28, 2021
*"Karen Wilkin writes in The New Criterion, January, 2021 "Olitski is...one of the most radical and innovative abstract painters of the recent past.
Jules Olitski in New York Karen Wilkin, New Criterion]
* ArtsEditor.com, feature article 11-19-201
"Superb Irrelevance: Experiencing Jules Olitski’s Late Works"* Swedish art critic
Ulf Linde mentions Olitski as an example of "visual
muzak
Muzak is an American brand of background music played in retail stores and other public establishments. The name has been in use since 1934, and has been owned by a division or subsidiary of one or another company ever since. In 1981, Westingh ...
" in the interview text ''Om det genant enkla'' (Eng: ''About that which is awkwardly simple'')
[Linde, Ulf: "Svar", Albert Bonniers förlag, 1999, .]
*
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
art critic Roberta Smith says in her October 14, 2005 review that Olitski is "...an artist who, if he hasn't quite come full circle, has always combined a penchant for flash and visual drama with a keen interest in the physicality of paint, whether thin, as in his stained and spray-painted abstractions of the 1960s, or thick"
accessed online November 26, 2007
References
External links
Official Website February 5, 2007.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Olitski, Jules
1922 births
2007 deaths
Abstract expressionist artists
Abstract painters
20th-century American painters
American male painters
21st-century American painters
21st-century American male artists
United States Army personnel of World War II
Painters from New York City
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Jewish painters
Jewish American artists
Modern painters
Artists from New Hampshire
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Ukrainian Jews
Pratt Institute alumni
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development alumni
20th-century American printmakers
C.W. Post College faculty
Bennington College faculty
Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (New York City) alumni
20th-century American Jews
21st-century American Jews
20th-century American male artists