Jules Olitski in New York
Karen Wilkin | The New Criterion | 15th January 2021
Olitzky absorbed from his Abstract Expressionist predecessors not the dramatic expressive gesture but the power of colour. He launched into colour-driven abstraction, showing a colour sense that “walks a tightrope between the ravishing and the vaguely disturbing.” What gives these works a feeling of prescience is that their wonky cellular and blobby shapes signalled that Pop was just around the corner.