American Abstract Expressionist Franz Kline was the quintessential “action painter.”  His works express velocity and feeling, all masterfully communicated in a few, powerfully and strategically applied slashes of pigment.  While relatively overlooked at the beginning of his career, the confidence infused in his broad, bold strokes of black house paint layered on top of white backgrounds eventually earned him great international recognition and acclaim.  Despite this limited palette (which cause many to identify him as a forerunner to Minimalism), Kline maintained that his paintings were infused with emotion - that each slash of paint conveyed a certain meaning - even if that meaning could not be overtly expressed. 



Kline was highly aware of the importance of color and color contrasts in his works, a fact that may not be immediately apparent in his iconic black and white canvases.  These works, however, are not simply black strokes imposed on top of a stark white background.  Instead, they are layered one on top of the other, with Kline going back in with his white paint, elevating the pigment to that of equal importance to the black.  The end result is a wide spectrum of hues in both colors, from pure and warm to mixed and cold.  And Kline did not eschew other colors, either—indeed, some of his “black and white” canvases include small passages of yellow or red, and others are tours de force of color, such as this untitled work on paper, which features passages of black, green, yellow, and blue that pull the eye across the picture plane.  The bulk of Kline’s more colorful works are clustered around 1959, towards the end of his career after his black and white works had earned him a solid reputation among the public and critics alike, particularly that of arguably the most important critical voice of the period, Clement Greenberg.  These colorful paintings serve as important visual and intellectual counterpoints to his black and white works, examples of the artist’s broad range of expertise beyond the aesthetic for which he is most commonly praised.