Jules Olitski

Jules Olitski – His artistic talent was evident even as a schoolboy

Jules Olitski was born Jewel Demikowski on 27 March 1922 in Snowsk, then part of the Soviet Union, now part of Ukraine. He never got to know his biological father, a commissar, because he was executed by the Soviet regime before he was born. In 1923, Jules emigrated to the USA with his mother and grandmother to escape the difficult conditions at home where they found accommodation in Brooklyn, New York; his grandmother looked after little Jules while his mother earned a living for the small family. In 1926, Jules’ mother married the widower Hyman Olitsky, who already had two sons from his first marriage and the couple had another daughter together. Jules Olitski already showed a talent for drawing during his school years and sporadically attended art classes in Manhattan. After graduating from high school, he won his first art prize. In 1939, Olitski visited the World's Fair in New York and admired the portraits of the Dutch master Rembrandt exhibited there.

First solo exhibition of abstract paintings in Paris

With the help of a scholarship, Jules Olitski was able to begin studying art at the Pratt Institute and was also accepted at the National Academy of Design in New York. His military service for the US armed forces during the Second World War also earned him American citizenship. After his discharge from the army, Olitsksi continued his studies in Paris where he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Ossip Zadkine, became acquainted with the masters of European Modernism, and critically scrutinised his own painting style. In order to consciously free himself from all habits and mannerisms, he occasionally blindfolded himself while painting. Olitski had his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1950 and was subsequently invited to exhibit with the CoBra group. However, this did not actually materialise because he returned to the USA and completed his studies there with a Bachelor and Master’s degree in art education at New York University.

Pioneering experiments with abstract colour fields

Jules Olitski initially developed his painting style on the basis of Parisian Art Informel and American Abstract Expressionism. In 1960, he very suddenly broke away from the encrusted surfaces he had previously used and instead worked with a thin, luminous application of colour. The creation of coloured surface textures was a central element in the work of Olitski, who later gained international fame for his Colour Field painting. He worked with brushes, sponges, rollers and mops to achieve the desired colour structures. In 1966, he was one of four artists representing the USA at the Venice Biennale, and in 1968, took part in the 4th documenta in Kassel. In 1969, he had the privilege of being the first living American artist to open a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991, and in 2006 of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His late work was characterised by coloured spherical forms, which he used to create entire landscapes.

Jules Olitski died on 4 February 2007 in his hometown of New York.