The Nourishing Relationship of Olitski and Caro
A recent exhibition of works by two former faculty members and iconic figures in contemporary art—sculptor Sir Anthony Caro and painter Jules Olitski—"offers a capsule vision of the relationship of the two artists" during their formative years together at Bennington, one critic writes.
The exhibition, Caro & Olitski: 1965-1968, Painted Sculptures and the Bennington Sprays, was on view at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York City through October 25.
Says critic Karen Wilkin in Hyperallergic:
"From 1963 through 1965, the American painter Jules Olitski and the British sculptor Anthony Caro both taught at Bennington College in Vermont; the former was a faculty member, the latter an artist in residence. The ambitious young artists, along with the painter Kenneth Noland, who lived in the next town, saw each other almost daily, frequenting each other’s studios and exchanging ideas. In a letter to me in 1998, Olitski recalled this as the time when the three eager young men were “finding our way into making art. In those two or three years of close contact, we began to grow, for better or worse into the men we became, the artists we became. Through each other’s eyes, supportive and competitive, our art took off.”'