Revelation: Major Paintings by Jules Olitski at the Toledo Museum of Art

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Gloria Garfinkel450 West 31st Street, Loft 2NNew York, NY 10001Tel: 212.643.9545

Highlighting 30 works from his entire career, the Jules Olitski exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art showcases Olitski’s transformation through his five major exploratory periods: Stain, Spray, Baroque, High Baroque and Late paintings.

Stain Paintings: An early period in Olitski’s career, the Stain paintings period involved actually staining the canvas with acrylic pigments. A part of a larger movement known as Color Field, Olitski and other highly-regarded artists used the staining technique to eliminate the idea of depth in the painting.

http://www.ggarts.com/

Gloria Garfinkel450 West 31st Street, Loft 2NNew York, NY 10001Tel: 212.643.9545

Spray Paintings: Olitski continued his exploration of flat, bold-colored painting in the Spray painting series. The minimalist nature of these large paintings allowed Olitski to explore subtle gradations and hue shifts that can be created using only one color.

Baroque and High Baroque Paintings: The Baroque and High Baroque periods allowed Olitski to explore a shift from his previous monochromatic paintings to creating lush abstract works. Using bold colors and experimenting with surface texture, Olitski wanted to express physicality in his paintings during these periods. Influenced during this time by Rembrandt and El Greco, Olitski explored ways to showcase his steadfast abstract art via a Renaissance influence.

Late Paintings: In his last works before he died, Olitski looked toward Classical and spiritual artistic inspirations to experiment and influence his typical abstract forms and shapes.

http://www.ggarts.com/

Gloria Garfinkel450 West 31st Street, Loft 2NNew York, NY 10001Tel: 212.643.9545

The Toledo Museum of Art’s exhibition lighting captures Olitski’s work environment. Often working throughout the night until the early hours of dawn, Olitski painted during a time when natural light was at its weakest. The exhibition lights the paintings in a way to give the audience an organic viewing of them during the most quiet hours of the night and day. The lighting work captures the atmosphere in which Olitski painted, showcasing the beauty of the paintings as the artist experienced them during their creation.

The exhibition does not ignore any period of Olitski’s career; typically only the famous works from his early years are highlighted in exhibitions. Olitski first rose to fame in 1967, when he won the Corcoran Gold Medal and William A. Clark Award at the 30th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Painters at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Since the late 1960s, Olitski’s paintings have been pondered by many people via hundreds of exhibitions around the world.

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