Jules Olitski, Contemporary Prints at Kass/Meridian

Jules Olitski (Russian-American, 1922-1907)
Russian-born painter generally identified with the Abstract Expressionism School known as color field. He was one of the first to use thinned paints in a staining technique to create color compositions of a delicate, ethereal quality.

After leaving Russia, Olitski studied in Paris and then moved to New York, Influenced by the color-field painters and Hans Hoffman he stayed with Abstract Expressionism, while many of his colleagues were joining the Pop Art Movement in the 1960s. During this period Olitski developed the Post-Painterly Abstraction style along with Helen Frankenthaler which came to be know as color-field painging. This technique centered on the elimination of brushstrokes, using instead stains and sprays of contrasting colors. Jules Olitski’s later works developed into a more textural style.

Jules Olitski’s artwork is included in numerous public and private collections throughout the world including in New York the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC and the Tate in London.