Painting

Franz KlineWW-1952-122969

1952·Oil on canvas·195.6 × 254 cm (77 × 100 in.)

<p>Until the early 1940s, Franz Kline painted realistic landscapes, portraits, and cityscapes that were inspired by the textures and forms of New York City. Around 1949 he began to make black-and-white canvases such as <em>Painting</em>, which, while abstract, continue to suggest the invigorating energy of urban street life. The artist’s preparation for his paintings included making numerous sketches on newspaper or telephone-book pages. He then translated a small-scale drawing onto canvas, as, what he called, “strokes expanding as entities in themselves.” Utilizing housepainters’ brushes, Kline tacked his canvases to a wood panel in order to obtain the hard surface that he needed to paint his world of eternally colliding forces. Though the many visible drip marks imply a quick, spontaneous execution, the artist returned to this work several times over a two-month period to refine and strengthen its rhythm and spacing.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1952
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 195.6 × 254 cm (77 × 100 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Franz Kline

Artist

Franz Kline

Painting

Franz Kline was an American painter. He is associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Kline, along with other action painters like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, John Ferren, and Lee Krasner, as well as local poets, dancers, and musicians, came to be known as the informal group, the New York School. Although he explored the same innovations to painting as the other artists in this group, Kline's work is distinct in itself and has been revered since the 1950s.

Wilkes-Barre, PA, USA

Full artist profile →