Turin

Artist Franz Kline (American, 1910 - 1962)

Date1960

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 80 3/8 x 95 1/2 inches (204.14 x 242.57 cm)
Framed: 81 1/2 x 96 3/4 x 1 5/8 inches (207.01 x 245.75 x 4.13 cm)

Credit LineGift of Mrs. Alfred B. Clark through the Friends of Art

Object numberF61-23

Signedverso: "Franz Kline 1960"

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

Modern Art

Terms

DescriptionOn white ground, black forms; diagonal from point two-thirds up to upper right corner, supported by four vertical strokes, two thin at outsides, two thick inside; above it, atop, horizontal supported by short stroke at its left end, above diagonal; two thin diagonals from lower left converge at center; thick diagonal from bottom center to right margin; circular form, bottom center; very thick vertical, lower right corner.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

The Logic of Modern Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 19-February 26, 1961, no. 58.

Franz Kline Memorial Exhibition, Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, DC, October 30-December 27, 1962, no. 91.

Franz Kline Memorial Exhibition, Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, NY, December 3-28, 1963, no. 20.

Fifty Years of Modern Art, 1916-1966, Cleveland Museum of Art, June 14-July 31, 1966, no. 142.

The Vital Gesture: Franz Kline in Retrospect, Cincinnati Art Museum, November 27, 1985-March 2, 1986; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, April 17-June 9, 1986; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, June 26-September 28, 1986, no. 122.

Made in America: Ten Centuries of American Art, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, February 5-April 30, 1995; The Saint Louis Art Museum, June 16-September 4, 1995; The Toledo Museum of Art, October 13, 1995-January 7, 1996; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, March 17-May 19, 1996; The Carnegie Museum of Art, July 6-September 22, 1996, no. 146.

Drawing and Painting, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, March 18, 2000-February 19, 2001.

Franz Kline (1910-1962), Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, October 20, 2004-January 31, 2005.

Franz Kline: Coal and Steel, Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley, Allentown, PA, October 7, 2012-January 13, 2013.

Gallery Label

The sweeping gestural brushstrokes and dramatic black and white contrasts seen in Turin characterize Franz Kline's mature work. His goal was to create a dynamic equilibrium through asymmetry and the interaction of black and white. Close looking reveals that upon a white ground, black and white paint have been applied to the surface with equal importance. Kline used commercial house paints and brushes as large as five inches wide to create these emphatic gestures.

Named after a city in northern Italy, Turin evokes both architectural structures such as bridges and girders and the surging energy of the metropolis.

Provenance

With Sidney Janis Gallery, stock no. 8818, New York, NY, by January-April 1961 [1];

Purchased from Sidney Janis Gallery by Mrs. Alfred B. Clark, Santa Barbara, CA, April 1961;

Her gift, through the Friends of Art, to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1961.

NOTES:

[1] A Sidney Janis Gallery label is on the painting’s verso. Sidney Janis Gallery lent the painting to the Nelson-Atkins exhibition The Logic of Modern Art, January 19-February 26, 1961. It remained at the museum on consideration until its purchase by the Friends of Art in April 1961, using funds donated to the Friends by Mrs. Alfred B. Clark. See letters from Ralph T. Coe, Nelson-Atkins Director, to Sidney Janis, April 27, 1961 and from Milton F. Barlow, President, Friends of Art, to Mrs. Clark, May 3, 1961, NAMA curatorial files.

Published References

The Logic of Modern Art, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1961), 10, back cover, (repro.).

“Accessions of American and Canadian Museums,” Art Quarterly 24, no. 3 (Autumn 1961), 307, (repro.).

Leslie Judd Ahlander, “Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, opens with Kline Retrospective,” Art International 6, no. 8 (October 25, 1962), 47, (repro.).

Franz Kline Memorial Exhibition, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: Washington Gallery of Modern Art, 1962), 40, 54, (repro.).

Franz Kline Memorial Exhibition, exh. cat. (New York: Sidney Janis Gallery, 1963), unpaginated, (repro.).

Edward B. Henning, Fifty Years of Modern Art, 1916-1966, exh. cat. (Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966), unnumbered page, 202, (repro.).

Edward Hill, The Language of Drawing (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 127-129, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, George L. McKenna and Marc F. Wilson, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 2, Art of the Orient, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 206, (repro.).

Florence Margaret Daniels, Why Art? (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1978), 133, 155, (repro.).

Harry F. Gaugh, The Vital Gesture: Franz Kline, exh. cat. (New York, NY: Abbeville Press, 1985), 113, 126-27, (repro.).

Stephan Salisbury, “Premature Aging,” The Kansas City Star (September 7, 1986), 6D, (repro.).

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 254, (repro.).

Henry Adams, et al., Made in America: Ten Centuries of American Art, exh. cat. (New York, NY: Hudson Hills Press, 1995), 177, (repro.).

William T. Squires, Art, Experience and Criticism, 3rd ed. (Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 14, (repro.).

“Lectures,” The Kansas City Star (September 26, 1999), 168, (repro.).

Newsletter (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, March 2000), 2, (repro.).

Matthew Kangas, Jim Leedy: Artist Across Boundaries (Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Art Institute and Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2000), 22, (repro.).

Franz Kline 1910-1962 , exh. cat. (Milan: Skira Editore S.p.A., 2004), 274-275, 300, (repro.).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 217, (repro.).

Robert S. Mattison, Franz Kline: Coal and Steel, exh. cat. (Allentown, PA: Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley, 2012), 94-95, 111, (repro.).

Katharine Kuh, My Love Affair with Modern Art: Behind the Scenes with a Legendary Curator, Avis Berman, ed. (New York, NY: Arcade Publishing, 2006), 232.

Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Black Mountain Songs, New Amsterdam Records, 2017, cover.

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