Franz Kline was born May 23, 1910, in Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania. While enrolled at Boston University, he took art classes at
the Boston Art Students League from 1931 to 1935. In 1935, Kline went to
London and attended Heatherley’s Art School from 1936 to 1938. He settled
permanently in New York in 1939. During the late 1930s and 1940s, Kline
painted cityscapes and landscapes of the coal-mining district where he was
raised as well as commissioned murals and portraits. Kline was fortunate
to have the financial support and friendship of two patrons, Dr. Theodore
J. Edlich, Jr., and I. David Orr, who commissioned numerous portraits and
bought many other works from him. In this period, he received awards in
several National Academy of Design Annuals.
In 1943, Kline met Willem de Kooning at Conrad
Marca-Relli’s studio and within the next few years also met Jackson
Pollock. Kline’s interest in Japanese art began at this time. His mature
abstract style, developed in the late 1940s, is characterized by bold
gestural strokes of fast-drying black and white enamel. His first solo
exhibition was held at the Egan Gallery, New York, in 1950. Soon after, he
was recognized as a major figure in the emerging Abstract Expressionist
movement. Although Kline was best-known for his black-and-white paintings,
he also worked extensively in color, from the mid-1950s to the end of his
life.
Kline spent a month in Europe in 1960, traveling mostly
in Italy. In the decade before his death, he was included in major
international exhibitions, including the 1956 and 1960 Venice Biennales
and the 1957 Sao Paulo Bienal, and he won a number of important
prizes. Kline died May 13, 1962, in New York. The Gallery of Modern Art,
Washington, D.C., organized a memorial exhibition of his work that same
year.
