Untitled

Franz Kline once proclaimed, “These are painting experiences. I don’t decide in advance that I’m going to paint a definite experience, but in the act of painting, it becomes a genuine experience for me…. If you look at abstraction, you can imagine that it’s a head, a bridge, almost anything – but it’s not these things that get me started on a painting” (F. Kline in K. Kuh, ‘Franz Kline,’ Franz Kline 1910-1962, Milan, 2004, p. 124). The artist’s stark black-and-white paintings are some of the dynamic art created during the post-war period, and his manifestation of pictorial form are comprised almost solely of black and white gestures applied to a surface. In this early Untitled work, although the surface composition make look chaotic and uncontrolled, it is in fact finely balanced and precise.

While historically considered a classic representation of Abstract Expressionism, Kline's black and white paintings possess an uncanny sense of immediacy and of being in the present moment. One can easily conjure up an image of the artist maneuvering his brushes dipped in black paint to bring his composition to life. Because his gesture can be traced with such clarity, one can almost literally trace the movements of his hand and arm, forcing seemingly spontaneous decisions directly onto the paper. Nevertheless, his working method belies this appearance of spontaneity; he often deliberated on making the crucial stroke or made revisions during multiple sittings.