Tags:   barnett newman newman painter 20th century american jewish 1947 1940s death of euclid abstract expressionism

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Pastel on paper; 50.5 x 45.1 cm.

OLITSKI, JULES (1922– ), U.S. painter, sculptor, and printmaker. Born Jules Demikovsky in Russia, Olitski immigrated to the United States in 1923 and grew up in New York. He studied painting and drawing at the National Academy of Design (1940–42) and sculpture at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (1940–42) in New York. He served in the Army during World War II (1942–45), before which he became an American citizen and adopted his stepfather's surname. In 1947 Olitski studied sculpture at the Educational Alliance with Chaim *Gross. Under the GI Bill, Olitski received additional art instruction at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére (1949–50) and with the sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1949) in Paris. In an effort to transcend his academic training, Olitski made a series of vigorously rendered paintings while blindfolded. He had his first solo exhibition in Paris (1951), where he showed partially abstract, brightly colored paintings. Upon his permanent return to the United States he received a B.S. (1952) and an M.A. (1954) in art education from New York University. Responding to his vibrantly hued Parisian works, during this transition period Olitski made monochrome abstractions and experimented with heavily impastoed imagery in the late 1950s.

Throughout Olitski's career he explored varied modes of color field painting. Adopting a technique made popular by Helen *Frankenthaler and Morris *Louis, in 1960 Olitski started to stain large canvases with hard-edge, oblong shapes; Born in Snovsk (1963, Art Institute of Chicago) is one of several paintings in the Core series. In 1964 Olitski applied paint to canvases with spray cans and later with a spray gun. Color mists hover and subtle hues of pink dissolve into each other in Ishtar Melted (1965, Princeton University Art Museum). During the 1970s, Olitski reacted against the spray technique and composed abstractions with tactile, dense, often dull-colored paint. Iridescent paintings followed, in which he applied gobs of paint with mittened hands. Temptation Temple (1992, collection unknown) exemplifies this period with the energetic texture and sense of relief created by the thick metallic brown color interwoven with highlights of green, purple, and blue.

Olitski began making prints in 1954. His forays into printmaking yielded a wide range of imagery from representational self-portraits to abstractions. Colored silkscreens from the early 1970s are pure abstractions of color akin to his paintings of the period. In 1968 Olitski designed his first sculptures – aluminum abstractions colored with a spray gun. His sculptures are typically produced in series, such as the Ring series (1970–73), a group of works comprised of concentric circles made of thin sheet steel. Olitski's art has been publicly exhibited on numerous occasions. Notably, Olitski represented the United States at the 1966 Venice Bienniale; he was the first living American artist to have a one-person show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1969); and in 1973 he enjoyed a retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
K. Moffett, Jules Olitski (1981); K. Wilkin and S. Long, The Prints of Jules Olitski: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1954–1989 (1989); B. Rose, Jules Olitski: Recent Paintings (1993).

Tags:   jules olitsky olitsky painter 21st century russian american jewish 2002 2000s anastasia green and blue metropolitan museum of art nude expressionism figure

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Lithograph in colors; 119 x 158cm.


Cassandre, pseudonym of Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron was a Ukrainian-French painter, commercial poster artist, and typeface designer. He was born Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron in Kharkov, Ukraine, to French parents. As a young man, Cassandre moved to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Académie Julian. The popularity of posters as advertising afforded him an opportunity to work for a Parisian printing house. Inspired by cubism as well as surrealism, he earned a reputation with works such as Bûcheron (Woodcutter), a poster created for a cabinetmaker that won first prize at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes.

Cassandre became successful enough that with the help of partners he was able to set up his own advertising agency called Alliance Graphique, serving a wide variety of clients during the 1930s. He is perhaps best known for his posters advertising travel, for clients such as the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits.

His creations for the Dubonnet wine company were among the first posters designed in a manner that allowed them to be seen by occupants in moving vehicles. His posters are memorable for their innovative graphic solutions and their frequent denotations to such painters as Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso. In addition, he taught graphic design at the École des Arts Décoratifs and then at the École d'Art Graphique.

With typography an important part of poster design, the company created several new typeface styles. Cassandre developed Bifur in 1929, the sans serif Acier Noir in 1935, and in 1937 an all-purpose font called Peignot. In 1936, his works were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City which led to commissions from Harper's Bazaar to do cover designs.

With the onset of World War II, Cassandre served in the French army until the fall of France. His business long gone, he survived by creating stage sets and costumes for the theatre, something he had dabbled in during the 1930s. After the war, he continued this line of work while also returning to easel painting. In 1963, he designed the well-known Yves Saint-Laurent logo. In his later years, Cassandre suffered from bouts of depression prior to his suicide in Paris in 1968.

Tags:   cassandre painter 20th century ukrainian french 1932 1930s spidoleine christie's art deco advertising poster

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Oil on canvas; 186 x 249 cm.

Arshile Gorky, original name Vosdanik Adoian (born April 15, 1904, Khorkom, Van, Turkish Armenia [now in Turkey]—died July 21, 1948, Sherman, Conn., U.S.), American painter, important as the direct link between the European Surrealist painters and the painters of the American Abstract Expressionist movement.

Gorky’s early life was disrupted when his father abandoned Turkey, his wife, and his family in order to avoid service in the Turkish army. The rest of the family soon fled to Armenia to escape Turkish persecution and were subsequently dispersed. In 1920 Gorky emigrated to the United States, where he rejoined his sister in Watertown, Mass., and assumed the pseudonym by which he became known. The name Arshile is derived from Achilles, the brooding Achaean hero of the Iliad. The name Gorky (Russian for “the bitter one”) is derived from that of the writer Maksim Gorky.

After studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, Gorky enthusiastically entered into the Bohemian life of Greenwich Village in New York City, occasionally passing himself off as a successful Russian portraitist who had studied in Paris and experimented with Automatism. From 1926 to 1931 he taught at the Grand Central School of Art. Early in his career, he hit on the idea of becoming a great painter by subjecting himself to long apprenticeships, painting in the style of such artists as Paul Cézanne, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso. His aim was never merely to imitate the work of others, however, but to assimilate fully their aesthetic vision and then move beyond it.

Gorky remained stylistically unable to move beyond the work of his mentors until about 1939, when he met the Chilean Surrealist painter Roberto Matta. The Surrealists’ idea that art is the expression of the artist’s unconscious enabled Gorky to discover his personal idiom, which he pursued the last eight years of his life. In such works as “The Liver Is the Cock’s Comb” (1944) and “How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life” (1944), biomorphic forms that suggest plants or human viscera float over an indeterminate background of melting colours. The erotic significance of the loosely painted forms and elegant, fine black lines is often made explicit in such titles as “The Diary of a Seducer” (1945) and “The Betrothal II” (1947). The years that saw Gorky finally emerge as one of the most important painters in the United States were marked by personal tragedy, however. In early 1946 he lost many of his paintings in a studio fire, and soon after he underwent an operation for cancer. In June 1948 his neck was broken in an automobile accident and he lost the use of his painting hand. His wife left him the following month, and shortly thereafter he hanged himself.

Tags:   arshile gorky gorky painter 20th century armenian american 1944 1940s the liver is the cock's comb public collection abstract abstract expressionism

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"Soyer - three brothers, American painters, emigrated with their family from Russia in 1912. Two were twins, Raphael Soyer, 1899-1987, and Moses Soyer, 1899-1974, b. Borisoglebsk. They settled in New York City making its inhabitants the chief subject of their paintings. They concentrated on the depiction of the natural attitudes, thoughts, and gestures of individuals in the performance of habitual tasks. Raphael's subdued, realistic style expresses an intimate sympathy for people, as in Office Workers (Whitney Mus., New York City) or in his portraits, e.g., Mina (Metropolitan Mus.). Moses' figures are usually presented in higher-keyed color or sharper contrasts of black and white, as in The Old Worker (Phillips Memorial Gall., Washington, D.C.). Their younger brother, Isaac Soyer, 1907-81, b. Borisoglebsk, also specialized in everyday figure scenes. His Employment Agency."

From The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press.

Tags:   moses soyer soyer painter 20th century american jewish 1934 1930s the lover of books figure portrait realism social realism interior post impressionism

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