Franz Kline - Abstract Expressionist and Action Painting
Franz Kline was born on May 23, 1910, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He studied painting and drawing at Boston University (1931–35), and drafting and illustration at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, London (1937–38). After returning to the United States, he settled in New York, where he produced traditional cityscapes and interior scenes and, in the early 1940s, won awards at several National Academy of Design Annuals.Kline soon began experimenting with small black-and-white brush drawings after Willem de Kooning introduced him to abstraction. At the end of the decade, De Kooning’s use of a Bell-Opticon projector inspired Kline to project his brush drawings onto his studio wall, transforming them into large-scale ideograms. These experiments marked the beginning of Kline’s characteristic abstractions incorporating powerful lines and rapidly developed gestures of black paint on white ground.
