Jules Olitski was born Jevel Demikovsky in Snovsk, Soviet Russia, on March 27, 1922, the only child of Jevel and Anna Demikovsky (née Zarnitskya). His father, a Soviet commissar, was executed by the Soviet government in December 1921, shortly before Olitski’s birth. Anna, her mother Freida, and the infant Jevel emigrated to the United States shortly after, settling first in Jamaica, Queens, then in Brooklyn. In high school, Olitski painted plein air landscapes with Russian-born Impressionist Samuel Rothbort (1882–1971). In 1940, he was admitted to the National Academy of Design in New York City, where he studied life drawing and portrait painting with Sidney Dickinson (1890-1980). In the evenings, he studied sculpture at the Beaux Arts Institute.
He was drafted into the United States Army in 1942. After being discharged in 1945, he married Gladys Katz, and in 1948, his first daughter, Eve, was born. During this time, Olitski studied sculpture in 1947 under Chaim Gross (1902–1991) at the Educational Alliance, and two years later, moved to Paris on the G.I. Bill, where he studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967), then at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.
In 1963, Olitski joined the faculty of Bennington College in Vermont, where painter Paul Feeley and sculptor Anthony Caro taught, and Kenneth Noland lectured. The following year, he was included in Post-Painterly Abstraction, an exhibition curated by Greenberg for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Olitski’s “Curtain” paintings were showcased in Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella, an exhibition curated by Michael Fried at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum in 1965.
During a class at Bennington late in 1964, Olitski and Caro brought a group of students to visit Kenneth Noland’s studio, where Caro explained “that what he wants to emphasize in his sculpture was the materiality, the density of the medium.” Olitski replied, “half-jokingly, that what I was looking for was the complete opposite: a spray of color in the air that stayed there, suspended. Just that.” To realize this vision, Olitski acquired an air compressed spray gun and embarked on a new method of painting, in which he laid a length of unstretched, unsized canvas on the floor and sprayed colors into each other and across the surface. He then determined the size and shape of the painting afterward by cropping the edges from the larger canvas. In 1966, Olitski was one of four American artists selected by curator Henry Geldzahler to exhibit at the XXXIII Venice Biennial that June. Early the following year, his spray painting Pink Alert (1966) won first prize at the 30th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Page 1 of 2 Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. His “Spray” paintings were included in His work was included in documenta IV in 1968.
In 1969, Olitski became the first living American artist to be given a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when his first series of sculptures were shown. Olitski continued to work on large-scale constructed sculpture throughout his career, working in Corten steel, clay, and aluminum in the 1970s; Plexiglas in the 1980s; and with repurposed cement mixers in the 2000s. Olitski’s sculpture was the subject of a retrospective at the Boston MFA and Hirshhorn Museum in 1977. He executed two portfolios of silkscreens, Graphics Suite #1 and #2 with the Chiron Press in 1970.
Throughout the 1970s, Olitski experimented with newly developed acrylic gels, pastes, and mediums, using brooms, mops, and other unconventional tools to apply paint. Paintings from this period are characterized by textured surfaces with underpainting, impasto, chiaroscuro, tinting, and glazing. Olitski’s first museum retrospective was organized by Kenworth Moffett of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1973, traveling then to the Albright-Knox in Buffalo, the Whitney Museum in New York, and finally the Pasadena Museum of Art. He purchased a home on Bear Island on Lake Winipesaukee near Meredith, New Hampshire, then in 1974, built a studio on the property, spending summers there and winters at his home in Islamorada, Florida.
In the 1980s, Olitski began using iridescent and interference pigments which shift in hue and temperature from different vantage points, working first on shaped Plexiglas before returning to canvas. In the thick acrylic gel surfaces of his late ’80s “Mitt” paintings, effects of chiaroscuro modeling are literalized by the interaction of sculpted low-relief surfaces and sprayed pigment. Beginning in the mid-90s, Olitski began drawing and painting from nature at both of his waterfront studios, eventually sliding between abstract and representational modes, often blending the two together in a painterly synthesis of naturalistic effects. From the mid-90s onward, he continued working on landscapes, life drawings, and printmaking in addition to his painting practice.
Following a life-threatening cancer diagnosis and surgery early in 2000, he embarked on a series of ferocious painterly works in high-keyed color that synthesized and amplified the surface effects and color interactions he had developed for decades. Olitski continued working until the end of his life. “Toward the very end, in the hospital” art historian Michael Fried recounted, “one of Jules’s doctors asked him whether or not he wanted heroic measures taken to extend his life. ‘Of course I do,’ Jules is supposed to have said. ‘I still have work to do.’” Jules Olitski died, aged 84, on February 4, 2007.
"The 1961 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture", Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA 1961-1962
"Recent Acquisitions", Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1962-1963
"Whitney Annual Exhibitions of Contemporary American Painting", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1962-1963
"Three New American Painters: Louis, Noland Olitski", Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, Regina, Canada, 1963
"Aspects of 20th Century Painting", Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, 1963
"The Formalists", The Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, D.C., 1963
"Directions: American Painting", San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, 1963
"New Directions in American Painting", Organized by Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Exhibit at Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, N.Y.,1963- 1964
Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, 1964
Atlanta Art Association, Atlanta, GA, 1964
J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY, 1964
Art Museum, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 1964
Washington University, St. Louis, MO, 1964
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, 1964
"67th Annual American Exhibition", The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL,1964
"The Atmosphere of 1964", Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 1964
"Post Painterly Abstraction", Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1964
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, 1964
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada, 1964
"American Drawings, 1964", The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, , NY, 1964
"Three American Painters (Noland, Olitski and Stella)", Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1965
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, CA, 1965
"Ausstellung Signale", Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland, 1965
"Frankenthaler, Noland, Olitski", New Brunswick Museum, St. John, NB, Canada, 1966
The Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, 1966
The Mendel Art Center, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, 1966
The Confederation Art Gallery and Museum, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, 1966
"XXXIII International Biennial Exhibition of Art", United States Pavilion, Venice, 1966
"30th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting", The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1967
"Form, Color, Image", Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, 1967
"Ninth Tokyo Biennale", Tokyo, Japan, 1967
"A Selection of Paintings and Sculptures from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Rowan, University of California, Irvine, CA, 1967
San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA, 1967
"Focus on Light", The New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ, 1967
"Large-Scale American Paintings", The Jewish Museum, New York, NY, 1967
"Torcuato di Tella International Prize Exhibition", Instituto Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1967
"Art for Embassies", organized by the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington DC, 1967
"Jules Olitski: Paintings, 1963-1967" The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC,1967
San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA, 1967
"Whitney Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 1968
"Jules Olitski' Recent Paintings", Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 1968
Hayden Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, 1973
"Documenta IV", Kassel, Germany, 1968
"Signals in the '60's", Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1968
"L'Art Vivant, 1965-1968, Foundation Maeght, St. Paul-deVence, France, 1968
"Twentieth Century American Art", Albert Pilavin Collection, RISD Museum, Providence, RI, 1968
"Selections from the Richard Brown Baker Collection", Art Galley, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, Jan 5-Feb 23, 1969
"The Development of Modernist Painting: Jackson Pollock to the Present", Steinberg Art Gallery, Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, MO, 1969
"The Sculpture of Jules Olitski", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, 1969
"Concept", Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY, 1969
"The Gosman Collection", Art Gallery of the University of Pittsburgh, Department of Fine Arts, Pittsburgh, PA, 1969
"American Art of the '60's: Toronto Private Collections, York University, Toronto, Canada, 1969
"Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Schwartz", Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY, 1969
University Art Gallery, State University of New York at Albany, NY, 1970
"New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970" The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y. Oct 18,1969-Feb 8, 1970
"Painting in New York: 1944-1969", Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, CA, 1970
"Whitney Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 1970
"American Artists of the Nineteen-Sixties", Contennial Exhibition, Boston University, School of Fine and Applied Arts, Boston, MA, 1970
"Color", UCLA Art Galleries, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 1970
"Contemporary Painting and Sculpture", Wellesley College Museum, Jewett Art Center, Wellesley, MA, 1970
"Giant Images of Today", Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, 1970
"35th Annual Exhibition", Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH, 1970
"Two Generations of Color Painting", Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 1970
"Selections from the Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Rowan Collection," Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, CA, 1970
"Painting and Sculpture Today", Contemporary Art Society and Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN, 1970
"Color and Field: 1890-1970", Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 1970
The Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH, 1970-1971
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, 1971
"The Drawing Society National Exhibition, 1970", Circulating Exhibition, 1970-1972
"Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture: Selections from the Collection of Mr and Mrs Eugene M. Schwartz", Milwaukee Art Center, WI, 1971
"The Structure of Color", Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, 1971
"Jules Olitski", University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI, 1971
"The Deluxe Show", sponsored by the Menil Foundation, Houston, TX, 1971
"The Vincent Melzac Collection", The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1971
"Whitney Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting",Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 1972
"Color Painting", Amherst College, Amherst, MA, 1972
"Abstract Painting in the '70's: A Selection", Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, 1972
"Masters of the Sixties", Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 1972
"Twentieth Century Prints from the Dartmouth Collection", compiled by members of the History of Prints Seminar, Department of Art, Hanover, NH, 1972
"Contemporary Art: The Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Gosman, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI, 1972
"Whitney Biennial Exhibition," Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, N.Y. 1973
"Olitski", Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, 1973;
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 1973
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 1973
"American Drawings 1963-1973", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 1973
"Ten Years Ago...an Exhibition of Paintings from 1964", David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1973
"The Great Decade of American Abstraction Modernist Art 1960-1970", The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, 1974
"Choice Dealers/Dealers' Choice", The New York Cultural Center in Association with Fairleigh Dickinson University", New York, NY, 1974
"Jules Olitski: Life Drawings" Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1974
"Selected Works from the Collection of Carter Burden", Marlborough Gallery, NY, 1974
"The Basel Art Fair", Basel, Switzerland, 1974
"Painting and Sculpture Today", Indianapolis Museum of Art, May 22-July 14, 1974; Taft Museum, Cincinnati, OH, 1974
"Monumenta", Newport, RI, 1974
"Tenth Anniversary, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art 1964-1974" The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT, 1974
"L'Art au Present", Palis Galeria (organized by Daniel Templon), Paris, France, 1974
"Biennale Internationale de la Gravure", Poland, 1974
"34th Biennial of Contemporary American Painting", The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Feb 22-April 6, 1975
"American Abstract Painting", La Bertesca, Genoa, Italy, 1975
"El Lenguaje del Color", Museo de Be-las Artes, Caracas, Venezuela, 1975
"American Color: 1961-1964", Visual Arts Museum, NY, 1976
"Jules Olitski-Life Drawings" Noah Goldowsky, New York, NY, 1976
"Painting and Sculpture Today-1976" Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN, 1976
"New Works in Clay", Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse and Onondaga County, Syracuse, NY, 1976
Edmonton Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada, 1978
"Aspects of Postwar Painting in America", Guggenheim Museum, NY, 1976
"Drawings of the '70's", Society for Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago, IL, 1977
"Olitski New Sculpture", Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, 1977
"New York the State of Art", The New York State Museum, Albany, NY, 1977
"A View of A Decade", Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, 1977
"Critics Choice", Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse, NY, 1977
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY, 1978
"ART 9/78", Basel, Switzerland, 1978
"Fifteen Sculptors in Steel around Bennington, 1963-1978", Park-McCullough House Association, North Bennington, VT, 1978
"Selected 20th Century American Nudes", Harold Reed Gallery, NY, 1978
"Three Hundred Years of American Art at the Chrysler Museum," Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, VA, 1978
"Monumental Abstractions", Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, 1979
"Art from Corporate Collection", Union Carbide Corporation Gallery, NY, 1979
"Images of the Self", Hampshire College Gallery, Amherst, MA, 1979
"A Century of Ceramics in the United States,1878-1978" Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, 1979
Renwick Gallery of the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, 1980
Cooper-Hewitt Museum, NY, 1980
"M. Knoedler and Co. Presents a Selection of Work in Los Angeles at Asher/Faure", 1979
"Color Abstractions: Selections for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston", Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Display Area, Boston, MA, 1979- 1980
"Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Schwartz Collection" Knoedler Gallery, NY, 1979
"Five in Florida" SVC/Fine Arts Gallery, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 1980
"Aspects of the '70's: Painterly Abstraction", Brockton Art Museum, Brockton, MA, 1980
"L'Amerique aux Independants", 91e Exposition, Societe des Artistes, Grand Palais, Paris, France, 1980
"The Fifties: Aspects of Painting In New York", Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, 1980
"In Our Time" From the Collection of the HHK Foundation for Contemporary Art; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, 1980
Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH, 1981
Columbus Museum of Art, 1981
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, 1981
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL, 1981
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, 1982
University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA, 1982
Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis, TN, 1982
University Art Museum, University of Texas, Austin, TX, 1982
"Selected 20th Century American Self Portraits", Harold Reed Gallery, NY, 1980
"Seven Works for Major Collections", Andre Emmerich Gallery, NY, 1980- 1981
"Assoziationen zu Blau", Gimpel-Hanover & Andre Emmerich Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland, 1981
"Depuis la Couleur, 1958/1964", Centre d'Arts Plastiques Contemporains, Bordeaus, France, 1981
"Three Decades/Oil on Canvas", North Park National Bank, Dallas, TX in Conjunction with Andre Emmerich Gallery, 1981
"International Florida Artist",Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, 1981
"An American Choice: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection", Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, 1981
"Amerikanische Malerei: 1930-1980", (organized by Whitney Museum) Haus der Kunst, Munich, 1982
"A Private Vision: Contemporary Art From the Graham Gund Collections", Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, 1982
"Drawings: New Directions", Summit Art Center, NJ, 1982
"American Artists Abroad 1900-1950", Washburn Gallery, NY, 1982
"Miro in America", Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, 1982
"Art in Embassies Program", U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, 1982-1984
"New York, New Art: Contemporary Paintings from New York Galleries", Delaware Art Museum,DE, 1983
"Early Works by Contemporary Masters: Caro, Francis, Frankenthaler, Gottlieb, Held, Louis, Noland, Olitski", Andre Emmerich Gallery, NY, 1983
"Eighteen Artists at One West Fourth Street", Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, NY, 1984
"Arte Comtemporaneo Norteamericano, Coleccion David Mirvish", American Embassy in Madrid, Spain, 1984
"Jules Olitski" Fondation du Chateau de Jau, Perpignan, France, 1984
"Arte Comtemporaneo Norteamericano, Coleccion David Mirvish", American Embassy in Madrid, Spain, January, 1984
"Jules Olitski" Fondation du Chateau de Jau, Perpignan, France, 1984
"Art Heritage at Hofstra", Hofstra University, Hempsted, Long Island, NY, 1985
"Pre Postmodern", Richard F. Brush Art Gallery, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY, 1985
"Grand Compositions: Selections form the Collection of David Mirvish" the Fort Worth Art Museum, Forth Worth, TX, 1985
"Selections from the William J. Hokin Collection", Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, 1985
"American Abstract Painting", Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles CA, 1985
"An American Renaissance-Painting and Sculpture Since 1940", The Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 1986
"Definitive Statements", David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, R.I., March 1-30, 1986
"Pre' Figuration Des Collections D'Art Contemporain De La Fondation Daniel Templon Sophiea-Antipolis, Paris, France, Nov. 12-15, 1986
Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, MA)
Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY)
Boca Raton Museum of Art (Boca Raton, FL)
Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, OH)
Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA)
Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, TX)
Denver Art Museum (Denver, CO)
Frederick R Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis, MN)
Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, GA)
Jack S Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX)
Kresge Art Museum (East Lansing, MI)
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum (St. Louis, MO)
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Fort Worth, TX)
Montana Historical Society (Helena, MT)
Museum of Art at Brigham Young University (Provo, UT)
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (Washington, DC)
National Museum of American Art-Smithsonian (Washington, DC)
Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY)
Oakland Museum of California (Oakland, CA)
Orlando Museum of Art (Orlando, FL)
Portland Art Museum, Oregon (Portland, OR)
Richard M. Ross Art Museum (Delaware, OH)
Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA) (San Francisco, CA)
Sheldon Museum of Art (Lincoln, NE)
Simon Fraser University Collection (Burnaby, BC)
Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, MA)
The Brooklyn Museum of Art (Brooklyn, NY)
The Currier Museum of Art (Manchester, NH)
The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota, FL)
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO)
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia, PA)
The University of Michigan Museum of Art (Ann Arbor, MI)
Wallrof Richartz Museum (Koln, Germany)
Washington County Museum of Fine Arts (Hagerstown, MD)
Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City, NY)
Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT)
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