1922-2007

One of the original color field painters to emerge in the 1950s, Jules Olitski was deeply concerned with the physical properties of paint. In his early career, Olitski depicted abstract shapes with thick, heavily impastoed surfaces, but later took to layering thin films of spraypaint onto his canvases, creating a trademark atmospheric effect. Olitski was always drawn to bright color, experimenting with unusual color harmonies and chromatic shifts. He would eventually return to impasto, experimenting with acrylic paints, binders, and gels that were not previously available.

Known throughout his career for exploring new materials and techniques in painting, Olitski began making his mitt paintings in the late 1980s when Golden Artists Colors sent him a new kind of paint they had recently developed. Using painter's mitts left in his Bear Island studio by his wife Kristina he mixed the new paint with thick acrylic gels, and the mitt pictures were born. Much like the brooms, squeegees, and spray guns previously used by Olitski, the mitts quickly became an important tool, and one that proved to be a harbinger of further curiosity and experimentation.

The works were neither planned nor sketched in advance; they document the spontaneous and visceral decisions the artist made with his paint-soaked mitts. The iridescent pigments and many shades of shimmering colors shift with the viewer’s position and in response to light.

In an interview, Olitski explained “I never wanted to make… paintings to be seen at a single glance.” The essence of a “mitt picture” cannot be grasped in one look; the canvases’ surfaces and color must be viewed from different angles to experience the evocative illusions they form when merged together by Olitski’s hand.