Jules Olitski—Matter Embraced
Paintings 1950s and Now
Knoedler & Company, New York
September 14 - November 5, 2005
KNOEDLER & COMPANY
19 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021
www.knoedlergallery.com
Paintings 1950s and Now
Knoedler & Company, New York
September 14 - November 5, 2005
Knoedler & Company announces its representation of Jules Olitski with the exhibition Jules Olitski—Matter Embraced: Paintings 1950s and Now. This exhibition pairs Jules Olitski's earliest series, the "matter" paintings, with his current works from the ongoing Embraced series — as Carl Belz writes in a new essay — "catapulting us from 1958 to 2005 and challenging us to see Olitski whole through the prisms of two seemingly disparate bodies of work."
Inspired by Jean Dubuffet and the School of Paris, Jules Olitski produced his "matter" paintings, mixing paint with spackle to create thick, coarse impastos, with vaguely representational figures atop smooth, controlled monochrome grounds. These paintings caught the attention of Clement Greenberg, who in 1958 invited Jules Olitski into the stable of French & Company, along with Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, Morris Louis, David Smith, and Kenneth Noland. Knoedler will be including five works that have not been seen in New York since their exhibition at French & Company in 1959.
Counterposed to the "matter" paintings, Jules Olitski's recent work from the Embraced series revisits and departs from the heavy impasto and subtle tonal shifts of the earlier pictures. Boisterous, daring and unrestrained, the Embraced paintings are an investigation and a celebration of color and texture, with large circular forms floating upon runny multicolored fields. Their vibrant swirls and unconventional color combinations attest that Olitski, after six decades of painting, continues to explore the unexpected, the beautiful, and the new.
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an essay by eminent art historian Carl Belz, Director Emeritus of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.
19 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021
www.knoedlergallery.com
