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JULES OLITSKI
JULES OLITSKI
Jules Olitski was born after his Bolshevik father was executed by the White Russian Army in Snovsk, Ukraine in 1922. Soon after, his mother escaped with him to the United States and started a new life in Brooklyn, New York, where she remarried in 1926. Born Jevel Demikovski, he adopted the name of his mother’s new husband, Hyman Olitsky, but disliked his stepfather greatly. He changed the last letter of his surname later in life after a clerical error.
Olitski was instrumental in the development of the Color Field School. Like his contemporaries Frankenthaler and Louis, Olitski stained the surface of his canvas in a technique that reacted against the gestural brushwork of Abstract Expressionism, and with its focus on material and surface, eliminated the illusion of depth. Though extremely important in the early development of Color Field, he spent most of his career out of the Limelight, and his lasting influence has not equaled that of colleagues like Helen Frankenthaler.
Olitski’s most important breakthrough came in the spring of 1965, when he began using spray guns to apply paint. The process of laying down an unprimed, unstretched canvas and spraying simultaneously with several guns was groundbreaking. It removed all vestiges of drawing and the artist’s hand. It was considered by some critics- including Michael Fried in his introduction of the color to Olitski’s 1967 show at the Corcoran Gallery- to be the apotheosis of the Color Field movement because it, “[made ] possible the interpretation of different colors, the intensity of each of which appears to fluctuate continuously,” more fully than any other technique before. Fried went on to say that this interpretation of color created a new sensation of depth in modern art, “by atomizing color Olitski has atomized, even disintegrated, the picture surfaces as well.” This elimination of depth and new understanding of the picture surface comes closest to Olitski’s own intention that his paintings resemble, “nothing but some colors sprayed into the air and staying there.” These works, like End Run (1967), were very well received by critics and are considered the most important of Olitski’s career.
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