Soon after it was made, this celebrated canvas was shown at the Whitney Museum Annual, and thereafter in almost every retrospective of Kline’s work. During his day, and for long after, Kline was considered a pre-eminent action painter, a key member of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. This painting, with its bold strokes of black enamel painted with a house-painter’s brush, epitomizes that style. As the critic Paul Brach wrote: “Painting, drawing and writing; the structure and its meaning; the symbol and the physical fact—are all united in a single gesture. And though it is deceptively spontaneous in appearance, that gesture is the millionth try—the final effort with all its failures behind it.” Yet, despite the rhetoric, Kline always worked from small studies, he always made considerable revisions to his canvas, and his art is therefore anything but spontaneous. He painted this work on a window shade.
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Inscription: Signed and Inscribed (on reverse): FRANZ KLINE/ EGAN GALLERY
[Charles Egan Gallery, New York; sold to Steinberg]; Muriel Kallis Steinberg, Chicago (by 1954–2006; her gift to MMA)
New York. Whitney Museum of American Art. "1952 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting," November 6, 1952–January 4, 1953, no. 73.
New York. Charles Egan Gallery. "Franz Kline," April 13–May 8, 1954, no catalogue.
Art Institute of Chicago. "61st American Exhibition: Paintings and Sculpture," October 21–December 5, 1954, no. 76.
Milwaukee Art Institute. "55 Americans: '55," September 9–October 23, 1955, no. 30.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. "Franz Kline, 1910–1962," April 12–May 25, 1969, not in catalogue.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "An American Choice: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection," May 21–September 27, 1981, unnumbered cat. (p. 67).
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. "Franz Kline: Black and White, 1950–1961," March 25–June 4, 1995, no. 18.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 17, 2007–February 3, 2008, extended to March 2, 2008, no. 42.
Royal Academy of Arts, London. "Abstract Expressionism," September 24, 2016–January 2, 2017, no. 70.
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. "Abstract Expressionism," February 3–June 4, 2017, no. 70.
Morita Shiryū. "On Looking at Mr. Kline’s Latest Works: Impressions of a calligrapher." Bokubi 5 (May 1952), no. 9, ill. p. 9.
Rudi Blesh. Modern Art, U.S.A.: Men, Rebellion, Conquest, 1900–1956. New York, 1956, ill. facing p. 252.
Alice Hess. "Great Private Collections: A Chicago Visionary." Saturday Review 7 (October 1980), ill. p. 73.
Eugene Victor Thaw. "The Abstract Expressionists." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 44 (Winter 1986–87), p. 47, fig. 39 (color).
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, ed. Franz Kline, 1910–1962. Exh. cat., Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea. Milan, 2004, ill. p. 313.
Pepe Karmel inAbstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Gary Tinterow, Lisa Mintz Messinger, and Nan Rosenthal. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2007, pp. 131–34, no. 42, ill. (color).
Richard Prince. Bettie Kline. [New York], 2009, unpaginated, ill.
Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 529, ill. (color), colorpl. 465.
Robert S. Mattison. Franz Kline Paintings, 1950–1962. Online resource [franzkline.hauserwirthinstitute.org/artworks], 2023 (accessed), no. 34, Ref. No. FKC27VCT, ill. (color), states the work is also known as "Painting".
Franz Kline (American, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania 1910–1962 New York)
1953
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