Franz Kline

Franz Kline (1910-1962), American painter. Franz Josef Kline was born on May 23, 1910, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and educated at the School of Fine and Applied Art of Boston University and Heatherly School of Fine Arts in London. Kline settled in New York in 1938, soon becoming associated with the Abstract Expressionist school of painting as it evolved during and immediately after World War II. With his first one-man exhibition in 1950, Kline attracted a great deal of attention because of his use of bold black areas, resembling huge fragments of Japanese calligraphy, against a plain white background, typified by his Mahoning (1956, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). In later years Kline sometimes added touches of strong colour to his basically black-and-white canvases, as in Dahlia (1959, Whitney Museum of American Art). During the 1950s Kline taught art at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, and Cooper Union in New York. He died on May 13, 1962, in New York. See also Modern Art and Architecture.