# Franz Kline
**Franz Kline** (May 23, 1910 – May 13, 1962) was an American painter associated with Abstract Expressionism, best known for large-scale black-and-white canvases built from bold, gestural strokes of black enamel on white ground. He was a member of the New York School, the informal circle of action painters that included [Jackson Pollock](https://www.edgepedia.org/jackson-pollock), Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, and [Lee Krasner](https://www.edgepedia.org/lee-krasner).[1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661) • [2](https://whitney.org/artists/707)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born / died | May 23, 1910, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; May 13, 1962, New York City, of a heart attack at 51[1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661) • [3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sx7Mllue1M) |
| Training | Boston University art classes and Boston Art Students League, 1931–1935; Heatherley's Art School, London, 1936–1938[4](https://art.state.gov/personnel/franz_kline/) |
| Breakthrough | First one-man exhibition at the Egan Gallery, New York, 1950, showing the first large black-and-white abstractions[1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661) • [5](https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.4908214) |
| Signature technique | Fast-drying black and white enamel applied with house-painting brushes; small ink studies projected onto canvas with a Bell-Opticon enlarger[4](https://art.state.gov/personnel/franz_kline/) • [2](https://whitney.org/artists/707) |
| Color period | Worked almost exclusively in black and white from about 1950, reintroduced color in 1956[6](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489325) |
| International exposure | Five paintings in *The New American Painting* (MoMA, 1958, toured eight European cities); ten works in the 1960 Venice Biennale, where he won the Italian Ministry of Public Instruction Prize[1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661) • [7](https://gagosian.com/artists/franz-kline/) |
| Teaching | Black Mountain College (summer 1952), Pratt Institute night school (1953–54), Philadelphia Museum School of Art (1954)[1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661) • [8](https://daytonart.emuseum.com/people/2037/franz-kline) |
## Early life and training
Kline was born in [Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania](https://www.edgepedia.org/wilkes-barre-pennsylvania), in the anthracite coal country whose industrial imagery later surfaced in his work. His father died by suicide in 1917, and from 1919 to 1925 Kline attended Girard College in Philadelphia, a free boarding school for fatherless boys.[1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661) He studied art at [Boston University](https://www.edgepedia.org/boston-university) from 1931 to 1935, took classes at the Boston Art Students League, and then attended Heatherley's Art School in London from 1936 to 1938, concentrating on illustration and drawing.[4](https://art.state.gov/personnel/franz_kline/) • [9](https://www.artnet.com/artists/franz-kline/biography)
He settled permanently in New York in 1939. Through the late 1930s and 1940s he painted cityscapes and landscapes of the coal-mining district where he was raised, along with commissioned murals and portraits, in a naturalistic, American Scene style. Two patrons, Dr. Theodore J. Edlich, Jr., and I. David Orr, commissioned portraits and bought many works, giving him financial support in these years. In 1943 a painting was exhibited at the National Academy of Design annual and won the $300 S.J. Wallace Truman Prize.[4](https://art.state.gov/personnel/franz_kline/) • [1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661)
## The turn to abstraction
In 1943 Kline met [Willem de Kooning](https://www.edgepedia.org/willem-de-kooning) at Conrad Marca-Relli's studio, and within a few years he also met Jackson Pollock; his interest in [Japanese art](https://www.edgepedia.org/japanese-art) began around this time.[4](https://art.state.gov/personnel/franz_kline/) The decisive step came around 1949, when de Kooning used a Bell-Opticon projector in his studio to enlarge some of Kline's small brush drawings onto the wall at huge scale. One such drawing, a small brush study of a locomotive roughly 3¼ by 6 inches, is credited with inspiring Kline to abandon his dark industrial subjects for black-and-white abstraction.[2](https://whitney.org/artists/707) • [6](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489325)
Kline's first one-man show opened in late 1950 at the Charles Egan Gallery and brought his abstract work its first critical notice; his large gestural black-and-white canvases established his reputation in 1951 and became synonymous with his name.[5](https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.4908214) • [1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661) In 1951 he was a co-organizer of the Ninth Street Show in New York.[1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661)
## Materials and method
**The apparent spontaneity was planned.** Kline worked at night under harsh lighting to bring out the tonal play between black and white, applying both oil and enamel with house-painting brushes, which produced textural inconsistencies and left a record of his movements.[7](https://gagosian.com/artists/franz-kline/) His mature style is characterized by bold gestural strokes of fast-drying black and white enamel.[4](https://art.state.gov/personnel/franz_kline/)
Many large canvases began as small ink drawings made on the pages of telephone books, whose printed grids prevented any illusion of receding perspective; Kline retained this flattened picture plane when he transferred the drawings to canvas. The small study was projected onto the wall and replicated in paint. *Mahoning* (1956), now in the Whitney Museum, was based on such a telephone-book study, and Kline atypically incorporated collage elements beneath layers of black paint.[2](https://whitney.org/artists/707) • [10](https://whitney.org/collection/works/1997) The Met's account of a 1952 untitled enamel painting notes that Kline always worked from small studies and made considerable revisions, so his art is "anything but spontaneous"; he painted that particular canvas on a window shade.[11](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/490195)
Kline resisted the calligraphy comparison that critics frequently drew, though he knew the Japanese avant-garde journal *Bokubi* (Beauty of Ink). In 1958 he stated: "I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important."[12](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489060?pg=1) He acknowledged that his abstractions retained figurative residue: "There are forms that are figurative to me, and if they develop into a figurative image … it's all right if they do."[6](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489325) Although the paintings were not meant to represent landscapes, he titled a number of them, including *Mahoning*, after towns near Wilkes-Barre in the Pennsylvania coal country of his childhood.[10](https://whitney.org/collection/works/1997)
## Color and late work
In 1956, after more than five years in black and white, Kline reintroduced color.[6](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489325) • [13](https://www.si.edu/object/untitled%3Asaam_1971.259) Works such as *King Oliver* (1958) and *Orange and Black Wall* (1959) belong to this vein, and late paintings of 1961 include *Black Iris*, *Slate Cross*, and *Red Painting*.[14](https://www.castellodirivoli.org/wp-content/uploads/archivi/2004_6_Franz_Kline/2004_6_Franz%20Kline_brochure_001.pdf) The Smithsonian holds two late color paintings from around 1960–61 in which black is brushed over red, green, and yellow fields, a vein of emotionalism the museum describes as cut short by his death at fifty-one.[1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661)
His reputation spread internationally in the late 1950s. Five of his pictures appeared in *The New American Painting*, organized by the [Museum of Modern Art](https://www.edgepedia.org/museum-of-modern-art) in 1958 and traveled to Basel, Milan, Madrid, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and London. In 1960 ten of his works were shown at the [Venice Biennale](https://www.edgepedia.org/venice-biennale), where he was awarded the Italian Ministry of Public Instruction Prize, and he traveled in Italy the following summer.[1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661) • [7](https://gagosian.com/artists/franz-kline/)
Kline fell ill in 1961 and ceased painting; he died of a heart attack in New York on May 13, 1962, at the age of 51. The Gallery of Modern Art in Washington, D.C., organized a memorial exhibition the same year, and the Museum of Modern Art's Kline memorial was shown in Turin in 1963.[8](https://daytonart.emuseum.com/people/2037/franz-kline) • [4](https://art.state.gov/personnel/franz_kline/) • [14](https://www.castellodirivoli.org/wp-content/uploads/archivi/2004_6_Franz_Kline/2004_6_Franz%20Kline_brochure_001.pdf)
## Reception and legacy
Kline's canvases were canonized as "action painting" by the critic Harold Rosenberg, and his work circulated abroad in American exhibitions during the Cold War as a signal of individualism and vitality.[15](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/kline-franz-1910-1962) Conservation science has since examined his materials closely: a Getty Conservation Institute volume in the Artist's Materials series and a collaborative study led by Corina Rogge, Andrew W. Mellon Research Scientist at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Menil Collection, analyzed works held at the [National Gallery of Art](https://www.edgepedia.org/national-gallery-of-art), the [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.edgepedia.org/art-institute-of-chicago), the Harvard Art Museum, the [Metropolitan Museum of Art](https://www.edgepedia.org/metropolitan-museum-of-art), and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, finding that Kline used similar materials in different ways across his career.[5](https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.4908214) • [16](https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/podcast-133-analyzing-art-materials-used-by-franz-kline.htm)
One detail of his biography is disputed among reference sources: the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the U.S. Department of State, and the Whitney all give his birth date as May 23, 1910, while The Art Story gives March 23, 1910.[1](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661) • [4](https://art.state.gov/personnel/franz_kline/) • [17](https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ARTH208-5.1.3.3-Franz-Kline.pdf)
## References
1. [Franz Kline, Smithsonian American Art Museum](https://americanart.si.edu/artist/franz-kline-2661)
2. [Franz Kline, Whitney Museum of American Art](https://whitney.org/artists/707)
3. [Franz Kline (video essay), YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sx7Mllue1M)
4. [Franz Kline, U.S. Department of State, Art in Embassies](https://art.state.gov/personnel/franz_kline/)
5. [Franz Kline: The Artist's Materials, JSTOR / Getty Conservation Institute](https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.4908214)
6. [Black Reflections, The Metropolitan Museum of Art](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489325)
7. [Franz Kline, Gagosian](https://gagosian.com/artists/franz-kline/)
8. [Franz Kline, Dayton Art Institute](https://daytonart.emuseum.com/people/2037/franz-kline)
9. [Franz Kline Biography, artnet](https://www.artnet.com/artists/franz-kline/biography)
10. [Mahoning, Whitney Museum of American Art](https://whitney.org/collection/works/1997)
11. [Untitled (1952), The Metropolitan Museum of Art](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/490195)
12. [Black, White, and Gray, The Metropolitan Museum of Art](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489060?pg=1)
13. [Untitled, Smithsonian Institution](https://www.si.edu/object/untitled%3Asaam_1971.259)
14. [Franz Kline 1910–1962 exhibition brochure, Castello di Rivoli](https://www.castellodirivoli.org/wp-content/uploads/archivi/2004_6_Franz_Kline/2004_6_Franz%20Kline_brochure_001.pdf)
15. [Kline, Franz (1910–1962), Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/kline-franz-1910-1962)
16. [Podcast 133: Analyzing Art Materials Used by Franz Kline, National Park Service](https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/podcast-133-analyzing-art-materials-used-by-franz-kline.htm)
17. [Franz Kline artist profile, The Art Story (Saylor archive)](https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ARTH208-5.1.3.3-Franz-Kline.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Visual arts and design › Painters › Post-1945 and contemporary painters › Abstract and abstract expressionist painters*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license