WILLIAMS GALLERY OF FINE ART

presents
MODERNISM, MR. MAGOO & MORE

NEW AND OTHER WORKS BY MASTER ANIMATOR, ARTIST AND FILMMAKER JULES ENGEL

The inaugural exhibit at the Williams Gallery's new location features a selection of Jules Engel's animation cels, drawings, paintings and prints from 1960-2001. Over fifteen of the works are new - a series of lithographs that vibrate with color, form and movement.

WHEN: Saturday September 22nd through October 20th, 2001
Opening Reception: Saturday, Sept. 22nd, 5-7 p.m.
RSVP (609) 921-1142

Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11 a.m.- 5 p.m. and by appointment

WHERE: The Williams Gallery, 16 ½ Witherspoon Street, Princeton, New Jersey

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Born in Budapest, Hungary, Jules Engel immigrated to the United States with his family in the 1930s. It took less than a decade for him to become an influential artist in southern California, where he created several series of lithographs at the prestigious Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, as well as other prints at Tyler Graphics. Engel is featured in the book Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists. Some thirty of his prints are in the collection at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Engel has also been represented at the Whitney Museum, the Hirschorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Smithsonian.

Engel's career is marked by his involvement in the traditional artforms of painting, printmaking and sculpture, as well as the more technological fields of film and animation. He began his career at Walt Disney Studios, contributing to Bambi and Fantasia, where he created the storyboards for the Nutcracker's Russian and Chinese dance scenes.

He left Disney to be a designer, then art director for United Productions of America. As one of the founding members of UPA, Engel was part of the team that created 1950s cartoon favorites Gerald McBoing-Boing, Madeleine and Mr. Magoo. In 1959, Engel co-founded Format Films, where he produced the whimsical Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon. He also produced and directed Icarus, an animated film scripted by Ray Bradbury, which went on to receive an Academy Award nomination. To date, Engel has collected three Academy Awards and eleven nominations.

As founding director of the California Institute of the Arts Experimental Animation Program, where he continues to teach, Engel has shared his knowledge and energy with young artists since 1970.

All of this work in electronic media has not distracted from his painting, drawing and especially printmaking. Engel is still incredibly prolific, creating compelling works on paper that vibrate with intelligence, spirit and masterful control. A flurry of recent prints reveal his experimentation with color, bold adventures in line and geometric shape, as well as his trademark sense of movement. After all, the artist notes, movement is and always has been the very soul of his visual artistry.

"Dance has always been an enormous influence," the artist recalls. "I saw the Ballet Russes at the Monte Carlo and that did it. Watching great dancers like Danilova, Baronova and Leonide Massine - as well as the choreography of George Balanchine - my vision began to emerge. Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham helped to further expand that vision."

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: The works in the current exhibit include animation cels of Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing, paintings, drawings and new limited edition lithographs. Also on view are animation drawings from Engel's 1992 film Skyscraper, in colored pencil, pen and marker.

"You'll see a lot of color in my more recent works, more so than fifteen years ago," says Engel, who won't reveal his age, but is probably in his eighties. "Either you have a sense of color or you don't. If you don't, you can learn from the masters, like Paul Klee, Ferdinand Leger and Pablo Picasso."

His heartfelt advice to young artists sounds a little like the "Just Do It" slogan: "What's most important is to do and do and do," Engel says. "Just keep working."