About this artwork
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 Painting, 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.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Contemporary Art
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Artist
- Franz Kline
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Title
- Painting
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1952
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Medium
- Oil on canvas
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Dimensions
- 195.6 × 254 cm (77 × 100 in.)
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Credit Line
- Bequest of Sigmund E. Edelstone
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Reference Number
- 1984.521
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Copyright
- © 2018 The Franz Kline Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Extended information about this artwork
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