Franz Kline
gigatos | May 26, 2022
Summary
Franz Kline is an American painter of the XXth century. He was born on May 23, 1910 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and died on May 13, 1962 in New York.
He is one of the major figures of abstract expressionism, located mainly (but not only) in New York in the 1940s and 1950s, like his friend Willem de Kooning. He practiced action painting: painting large canvases in black and white according to pre-established patterns.
Franz begins his elementary studies at Girard College. But he studied academic art at the “School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” and “Heatherley”s School of Fine Art of London” (1937-1938). Back in New York in 1939, he painted caricatures and scenery, then began to paint landscapes and portraits. Towards the end of the 1940”s he began his cycle of black and white paintings, as well as the large format paintings that are characteristic of his style, and he died prematurely in 1962. A retrospective exhibition was held the same year.
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His work
Like Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists, he is considered part of Action Painting because of his seemingly spontaneous and intense painting, concerned less, or more accurately not at all, with form or figurative language, than with brush movements and the use of the canvas. In most of Kline”s work (representative and mature), however, spontaneity is practiced more than expression. He prepared many rough sketches, usually on the pages of used telephone books, before going to do his “spontaneous” work.
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Black and white, and color
Kline”s best known paintings are in black and white. Kline reintroduced color into his paintings around 1955. Thus, after 1959, he used color more consistently in many of his most important paintings. Kline”s paintings are deceptively subtle. While in general his paintings have a dynamic, spontaneous and dramatic impact, it is interesting to see how Kline refers to his compositional patterns. Kline has carefully made many of his images more complex from studies. There seem to be references to Japanese calligraphy in Kline”s black and white paintings, although he always denied this connection. Bridges, tunnels, buildings, engines, railroads and other architectural and industrial images are often mentioned as sources of inspiration for Kline.
Kline”s most recognizable style comes from a suggestion made by his friend Willem De Kooning. In 1948, de Kooning suggested to an artistically frustrated Kline that he bring in a sketch to be projected with a Bell Opticon episcope he had in his studio. Kline described the projection like this, “A four by five inch black drawing of a rocking chair…loomed in gigantic black strokes which eradicated any image, the strokes expanding as entities in themselves, unrelated to any entity but that of their own existence.” (A 4 by 5 inch drawing of a rocking chair…loomed in gigantic black strokes which eradicated any image, the strokes expanding as entities in themselves, unrelated to any entity but that of their own existence). Kooning”s wife, Elaine de Kooning, a painter and also an art critic, reported the anecdote in the catalog of the 1962 retrospective exhibition. This is how Kline would have had the revelation of the large formats that he would later adopt. In reality, Kline”s transition to abstraction was more gradual. Nevertheless, Kline created paintings in the style of what he saw that day, throughout his life. In 1950, he exhibited many works in this style at the Charles Egan Gallery.Kline”s style, which emphasized line and drawing, would influence many artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Mark di Suvero and Brice Marden.
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