23 Facts About Jules Engel

1.

Jules Engel was the founding director of the experimental animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught until his death, serving as mentor to several generations of animators.

2.

Jules Engel lived in Oak Park, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago, and attended Evanston Township High School, where he began developing his drawing style.

3.

At the age of 17 Jules Engel moved to Los Angeles seeking an athletic scholarship to either USC or UCLA.

4.

Jules Engel lived in Hollywood while attending the Chouinard Art Institute and started to draw for magazines.

5.

Jules Engel worked in the studio of a local painter sketching landscapes, Ken Strobel.

6.

At Disney Jules Engel worked in the film Fantasia, released in 1940.

7.

Jules Engel did the storyboard for the sequence where Bambi first encounters the doe Faline.

8.

Jules Engel was an animator in the First Motion Picture Unit during World War II, alongside the likes of Ronald Reagan, and Theodor Geisel.

9.

Originally, Jules Engel was waiting to be drafted in the US Army, but was rejected because of his poor eyesight, and a bad shoulder.

10.

At UPA, Jules Engel worked as a background artist on cartoons including the Oscar-winning Gerald McBoing Boing, Madeline, and Mr Magoo, becoming art director in 1950.

11.

Jules Engel brought to UPA his distinctive use of color, influenced by abstract painting and the work of Kandinsky, Klee, Miro, Matisse, Dufy, as well of the Bauhaus book "Language of Vision".

12.

Together with Herbert Klynn and Buddy Getzler, former colleagues from UPA, Jules Engel founded the television animation studio Format Films.

13.

In 1964, Jules Engel designed the set for The Little Prince, using abstract sculptural forms on stage.

14.

Jules Engel was set designer for Le Jouex, an avant garde play starring Michelle Boucett.

15.

Back in the US, Jules Engel continued working on films about artists, directing A Look at a Lithographer and American Sculpture of the Sixties for Tamarind Lithography Workshop, and a film about the Swiss artist Max Bill.

16.

In 1969, Jules Engel became the Founding Director of CalArts' Animation Program; subsequently becoming the Founding Director of the Experimental Animation Department in the School of Film and Video.

17.

In 1973, Jules Engel self-published a collection of typographic art, entitled 'Oh'.

18.

Jules Engel was recipient of five Golden Eagle awards, the Fritz Award, the Norman McLaren Heritage Award, and the Pulcinella Award for Career Achievement.

19.

Jules Engel died of natural causes on September 6,2003, in Simi Valley, California, at the age of 94.

20.

In one of his final acts, in May 2003, Engel established the Jules Engel Endowed Scholarship Fund.

21.

The recipients of the awards are those students who have carried out their work at CalArts in Jules Engel' name, having demonstrated rigor, daring imagination and great curiosity about the world, leading to inventive, interdisciplinary projects.

22.

Jules Engel was a painter and produced a prolific body of oil abstract paintings, lithographs and other graphic artworks.

23.

Jules Engel was still working on a new series of lithographs just before his death.