Jules Olitski American, 1922-2007

Throughout his varied practice, Jules Olitski explored the material properties of paint; he often used non-standard materials such as gels and interference pigments, and also employed mitts, brooms, squeegees, and spray guns to apply paint. Early in his career, he made thick, heavily impastoed abstractions, yet it was his later atmospheric, layered spray-paint canvases that brought him fame.

Olitski exhibited widely during his lifetime, and in 1969, he became the first living artist and the third artist ever to have a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Olitski’s work has sold for six figures on the secondary market and belongs in the collections of the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art (via Artsy).