Jules Olitski

"Abare" Jules Olitski, Color-Field, Abstract Expressionist, Gestural Painting

1987

Edward Zutrau Kamakura, 5/1963 Signed, dated and titled on verso Oil on linen 38 1/2 x 51 1/2 inches Edward Zutrau is among the American artists who worked within the whirlwind of ...

Friedel Dzubas Untitled, 1981 Hand-painted monotype on pulp 30 x 24 3/4 inches A noted figure in the New York School, Friedel Dzubas was associated with the Color Field painting mo...

Larry Zox Lexington, 1973 Acrylic on canvas 61 x 49 inches Provenance: Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York Janie C. Lee Gallery, Houston, Texas Private Collection, Greenwood Village, Colorado Exhibited: New York, Andre Emmerich Gallery, Larry Zox: New Paintings, March 10 - 28, 1973. Houston, Texas, Janie C. Lee Gallery, Larry Zox, February - April, 1974. A painter who played an essential role in the Color Field discourse of the 1960s and 1970s, Larry Zox is best known for his intensely and brilliantly colored geometric abstractions, which question and violate symmetry. Zox stated in 1965: “Being contrary is the only way I can get at anything.” To Zox, this position was not necessarily arbitrary, but instead meant “responding to something in an examination of it [such as] using a mechanical format with X number of possibilities." What he sought was to “get at the specific character and quality of each painting in and for itself,” as James Monte stated in his introductory essay in the catalogue for Zox’s 1973–74 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Zox also at times used a freer, more intuitive method, while maintaining coloristic autonomy, which became increasingly important to him in his later career. Zox began to receive attention in the 1960s, when he was included in several groundbreaking exhibitions of Color Field and Minimalist art, including Shape and Structure (1965), organized by Henry Geldzahler and Frank Stella for Tibor de Nagy, New York, and Systemic Painting (1966), organized by Lawrence Alloway for the Guggenheim Museum. In 1973–74, the Whitney’s solo exhibition of Zox’s work gave recognition to his significance in the art scene of the preceding decade. In the following year, he was represented in the inaugural exhibition of the Hirshhorn Museum, which acquired fourteen of his works. Zox was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He attended the University of Oklahoma and Drake University, and then studied under George Grosz at the Des Moines Art Center. In 1958, Zox moved to New York, joining the downtown art scene. His studio on 20th Street became a gathering place for artists, jazz musicians, bikers, and boxers. He occasionally sparred with visiting fighters. He later established a studio in East Hampton, a former black smithy used previously by Jackson Pollock. Zox’s earliest works were collages consisting of pieces of painted paper stapled onto sheets of plywood. He then produced paintings that were illusions of collages, including both torn- and trued-edged forms, to which he added a wide range of strong hues that created ambiguous surfaces. Next, he omitted the collage aspect of his work and applied flat color areas to create more complete statements of pure color and shape. He then replaced these torn and expressive edges with clean and impersonal lines that would define his work for the next decade. From 1962 to 1965, he produced his Rotation series, at first creating plywood and Plexiglas reliefs, which turned squares into dynamic polygons. He used these shapes in his paintings as well, employing white as a foil between colors to produce negative spaces that suggest that the colored shapes had only been cut out and laid down instead of painted. The New York Times noted in 1964: “The artist is hip, cool, adventurous, not content to stay with the mere exercise of sensibility that one sees in smaller works.” In 1965, he began the Scissors Jack series, in which he arranged opposing triangular shapes with inverted Vs of bare canvas at their centers that threaten to split their compositions apart. In several works from this series, Zox was inspired by ancient Chinese water vessels...

Lynne Drexler Twilight Imagery, 1976 Signed and dated on the reverse Oil on canvas 30 1/2 x 22 1/2 inches Southern-born Lynne Mapp Drexler found her ar...

Jules Olitski (1922-2007) is one of Caviar20's favorite abstract artists of the 20th century. Over the course of his career, his aesthetic evolved in startling and fascinating ways....

Jules Olitski (1922-1977) is one of the most collected and accomplished artists associated with the color-field movement, if not 20th-century American abstraction. Possibly one of ...

Jules Olitski Wolf, 1985 Acrylic On Canvas 8h x 12w in

Jules Olitski Mozart Night, 1992 Silkscreen on wove paper Signed, dated, titled and numbered 71/108 in graphite pencil on the front Edition 71/108 47 × 36 inches Unframed Silkscreen ...