Jules Olitski

Jules Olitski (1922–2007) was a leading figure in Color Field painting and one of the foremost American abstract painters of his generation. Born in Snovsk, in present-day Ukraine, and raised in New York, he studied at the National Academy of Design before serving in the United States Army during the Second World War. Supported by the G.I. Bill, he continued his studies in Paris with Ossip Zadkine and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. His early paintings drew on both European Art Informel and American Abstract Expressionism. In 1958, he formed a lasting friendship with the influential critic Clement Greenberg and exhibited at French & Company alongside Morris Louis, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland and David Smith. By 1960, he was experimenting with pouring and staining dyes onto large canvases, subsequently developing the spray technique that produced his distinctive, seemingly weightless fields of colour. His growing international reputation was marked by participation in the Carnegie International in 1961 and the Venice Biennale in 1966, where he represented the United States. His first solo museum exhibition took place at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1967. In 1969, his sculpture exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art made him the first living American artist to receive a solo exhibition there, followed by a retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1973. In later decades, Olitski returned to heavily textured surfaces, exploring the effects of layered paint, acrylic gels and iridescent pigments. His work is held in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the National Gallery of Canada.