Jules Olitski: Revelation

Jules Olitski, Prince Patutszky Pleasures, 1962; Magna acrylic on canvas, 89 3/4 x 88 inches. Collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, Gift of the R. C. Kemper Charitable Trust. ©Jules Olitski Estate/Licensed by VAGA, New York. Photo: Dan Wayne.

Naples Museum of Art

By Suzanne Cohen

“Revelation: Major Paintings by Jules Olitski” assembles more than 25 enormous canvases that belong to both public and private collections. Olitski (1922-2007), who was honored throughout his career, acknowledged in an interview with the Daily News in 2002 that at the beginning, facing difficulty inserting himself into the art circuit, he decided to pass his works off as being those of an imaginary Russian artist, “Demikov,” in order to get the attention of galleries.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Olitski gained great international renown, by being the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The exhibition at the Naples Museum was organized by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. It demonstrates the principal techniques used by this artist, who started with his “stained canvas” and then evolved toward works in which he dispersed layers of spray paint. Later on, he developed a style that the curators of the Kemper Museum have called “baroque and high baroque” that consists of applying paint in thick and plastered layers. At the end of his career, Olitski used a leaf blower to spread the colors and give his paintings a driven, molten cosmic atmosphere that is manifested in his series “With Love and Disregard: Splendor.” Through May 6, 2013.