Franz Kline is associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s.
15 Facts About Franz Kline
2.
Franz Kline was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a small community in the Coal Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
3.
When he was seven years old, Franz Kline's father killed himself.
4.
Franz Kline returned to the United States with Kline in 1938.
5.
Franz Kline then moved to New York City in 1939 and worked for a scenic designer.
6.
Franz Kline later taught at a number of institutions including Black Mountain College in North Carolina and the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
7.
Franz Kline spent summers from 1956 to 1962 painting in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and died in 1962 in New York City of a rheumatic heart disease, ten days before his 52nd birthday.
8.
In 1946, the Lehighton, Pennsylvania, Post of the American Legion commissioned Franz Kline to do a large canvas depicting the town where he had attended high school.
9.
At the age of forty, Franz Kline had secured a personal style which he had already mastered.
10.
Franz Kline is recognized as one of the most important yet problematic artists of the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York.
11.
Franz Kline's style is difficult for critics to interpret in relation to his contemporaries.
12.
Franz Kline carefully rendered many of his most complex pictures from extensive studies, commonly created on refuse telephone book pages.
13.
Unlike his fellow Abstract Expressionists, Franz Kline's works were only meant to look like they were done in a moment of inspiration; however, each painting was extensively explored before his housepainter's brush touched the canvas.
14.
Franz Kline was known for avoiding giving meaning to his paintings, unlike his colleagues who would give mystical descriptions of their works.
15.
Franz Kline had his breakthrough show at the Charles Egan Gallery in 1950, and he participated in the 9th Street Art Exhibition the following year.