Jules Olitski American, 1922-2007

Jules Olitski was born in 1922 in Snovsk (now Ukraine) and emigrated with his family to the United States as a young child, growing up in Brooklyn, New York. From an early age he was drawn to art, and after high school he earned a scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute. He continued his formal training at the National Academy of Design beginning in 1940, but his studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942 and served through the end of World War II.

Following his military service, Olitski took advantage of the G.I. Bill to travel to Paris. There he studied first with sculptor Ossip Zadkine and then at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. While in France, he began challenging his academic background with unconventional artistic exercises, once even drawing blindfolded to push intuition to the forefront of his work. During this period he also connected with fellow American artists including Sidney Geist, Al Held, and Lawrence Calcagno; together they opened Galerie Huit on the Left Bank, where Olitski held his first solo exhibition in 1951.

Returning to New York after his time in Europe, Olitski completed both a B.A. and an M.A. in art education at New York University, finishing in 1952 and 1954. He began teaching at what is now SUNY New Paltz and would continue teaching at various institutions throughout his career. Alongside his educational work, Olitski developed distinct bodies of paintings that explored formal concerns of shape and color, gradually forging his signature atmospheric, chromatic style.

Olitski’s paintings gained substantial recognition; they were included in important exhibitions such as the XXXIII Venice Biennale at the U.S. Pavilion and the 1973 Whitney Biennial. Major traveling retrospectives of his work were organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and later by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. He also received numerous honors over the course of his long career, including awards at major international exhibitions like the Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture.

Olitski continued to innovate throughout his life, and his work is now represented in many of the world’s leading public and private collections. These include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery in London, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. He remained active in the art world until his death in 2007.