The Work

A modernist and formalist, Olimpia Ogilvie explored line, composition and color, both for their own sake and to express and elicit emotion. Deeply engaged with art history and in conversation with its traditions, her art was often autobiographical and evoked her intense sensory response to her natural surroundings, such as the sun-drenched Pyrenees, the trees and prairies of the Midwest, and the jungles of Costa Rica.

In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, she first established herself as a printmaker, participating in the Post World War II print revival then taking place in the United States. In 1960 she joined the workshop of Mauricio Lasansky, who at that time played a key role in revitalizing American printmaking. Under Lasansky’s mentorship, she experimented with intaglio, etching, drypoint, engraving and aquatint, working primarily in black and white, but also learning to combine several different plates to create a range of color within one image. 

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In 1966, in search of new methods, she moved to Paris, where she joined the legendary and radically innovative printmaker Stanley William Hayter and his Atelier 17, while at the same time continuing to paint and draw in her studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts.  At this time, vibrant, intense colors became a salient feature of her style.  Hayter’s viscosity technique played a role in this development, since it allows an artist to spontaneously apply inks of many different hues onto a single plate. Ogilvie’s new brightly colored style also owed something to the investigations of the color theorists Johannes Itten and Josef Albers, Op and Pop Art, psychedelia, and the political posters of May ‘68, all of which were part of her experience in Paris at that time.

In her figurative work, Ogilvie’s colors are subjective and daringly arbitrary. With their castles, perched villages, and massive rock formations, her French landscapes of the late 1960’s and early 70’s inscribe themselves within the tradition of late 19th and early 20th century French painting, such as Cézanne and the Fauves.  At the same time, their acid, quasi-psychedelic tones speak of the historical moment in which they were made. In her mature work, particularly the ‘Rainforest' paintings of Costa Rica, Ogilvie’s palette defamiliarizes perception and imparts a sense of renewal and enchantment to the viewer’s experience. “I am an image maker,” Ogilvie stated, “concerned with finding a particular way of looking at an ordinary thing in order to heighten perception of it.” 

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In the 1970’s and 1980s, Ogilvie engaged developments in contemporary figuration, from American Photorealism to Italian Neo-Expressionism, so as to forge her highly individual and dynamic style. In her final project, working alongside scientists in Costa Rica, she recorded the rainforest with a high degree of precision. Camping in the jungle at night, she created paintings that also register her direct response to this immersive experience, captured in fluid, searching lines and evocative colors. Her entire oeuvre is similarly animated by this tension between rigorous perception and the mysterious play of the imagination. 

Arabella Ogilvie-Makari, New York, 2021