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Lot Essay
This work is recorded as no. ZP68 in the Kline estate archives.
Kline restricted his palette to black and white in the early 1950s in order to focus on the formal concerns of composition and spatial movement through brushwork, paint application and the balance of forms. These paintings were innovative and forceful and Kline emerged as an important member of the New York Abstract Expressionists.
Like most of his important Abstract Expressionist colleagues, including de Kooning and Pollock, Kline's artistic development was neither linear nor systematic. Color had been an important feature of his painting process beginning in the 1940s. Until about 1956, however, Kline tended to paint over underlying areas of color until his canvases were dominated by the black and white palette for which he first rose to prominence. Discussing the reason for his shift toward a more colorful palette in 1956, Harry Gaugh observed, "It was in all likelihood a combination of factors. For six years black-and-white had elbowed color aside; it was time to let up a bit, give color breathing space (H. Gaugh, "Franz Kline: The Abstractions with Pure Color", Franz Kline: The Color Abstractions, exh. cat., The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1979, p. 12).
Gaugh has further noted:
Given that Kline painted at least a dozen color works of extraordinary quality between 1956 and 1961, his clichéd reputation as strictly a black and white artist could be set aside . . . Kline's art turned upon itself as he restructured and refined pictorial ideas invented years earlier. Just as it had taken him more than a decade to arrive at abstraction and then more time to explore black and white after working through color, so certain forms required long gestation before their expressive potential could be fully realized. However, in 1961 Kline had reached a new threshold in color. Structure, atmosphere, even figural, landscape, and mythic references all converged . . . (H. Gaugh, Franz Kline, New York, 1994, pp. 150-151).
In the present work, the brushwork and compositional elements of Kline's earlier years are still evident. Echoing the shape of the canvas, the central rectangle creates the deliberate tension and dynamic equilibrium present in Kline's most successful compositions. The bold brushwork and spectacular use of color point to a new direction in Kline's art, while tragically he was to pass away at this moment of change.
Kline restricted his palette to black and white in the early 1950s in order to focus on the formal concerns of composition and spatial movement through brushwork, paint application and the balance of forms. These paintings were innovative and forceful and Kline emerged as an important member of the New York Abstract Expressionists.
Like most of his important Abstract Expressionist colleagues, including de Kooning and Pollock, Kline's artistic development was neither linear nor systematic. Color had been an important feature of his painting process beginning in the 1940s. Until about 1956, however, Kline tended to paint over underlying areas of color until his canvases were dominated by the black and white palette for which he first rose to prominence. Discussing the reason for his shift toward a more colorful palette in 1956, Harry Gaugh observed, "It was in all likelihood a combination of factors. For six years black-and-white had elbowed color aside; it was time to let up a bit, give color breathing space (H. Gaugh, "Franz Kline: The Abstractions with Pure Color", Franz Kline: The Color Abstractions, exh. cat., The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1979, p. 12).
Gaugh has further noted:
Given that Kline painted at least a dozen color works of extraordinary quality between 1956 and 1961, his clichéd reputation as strictly a black and white artist could be set aside . . . Kline's art turned upon itself as he restructured and refined pictorial ideas invented years earlier. Just as it had taken him more than a decade to arrive at abstraction and then more time to explore black and white after working through color, so certain forms required long gestation before their expressive potential could be fully realized. However, in 1961 Kline had reached a new threshold in color. Structure, atmosphere, even figural, landscape, and mythic references all converged . . . (H. Gaugh, Franz Kline, New York, 1994, pp. 150-151).
In the present work, the brushwork and compositional elements of Kline's earlier years are still evident. Echoing the shape of the canvas, the central rectangle creates the deliberate tension and dynamic equilibrium present in Kline's most successful compositions. The bold brushwork and spectacular use of color point to a new direction in Kline's art, while tragically he was to pass away at this moment of change.