![]() Kline's 1950's abstract paintings were based on drawings made on pages from a telephone book to which he would then return to select the ones he felt would work best as paintings. The present work, Herald, from 1953-54 stretches the expressive potential of the palette and is a first-rate architectonic masterpiece from the pinnacle of the artist's oeuvre. In contrast, Kline's work sprang forth at the turn of the decade from the 1940's to 1950's, quickly establishing a signature style marked by bold brushstrokes, applied with vigor and apparent spontaneity while stretching the seemingly limited potential of a black and white repertoire. Within the New York school of Abstract Expressionism, artists the likes of Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock emerged from European modernism. Kline was a late comer to gestural abstraction relative to his piers and enhanced the movement rather than paved the way. The present work possesses an elegant and confident vigor in a structurally self-sufficient and fluid composition, and can be heralded as one of his greatest masterpieces.įranz Kline's mature work of the 1950's and early 1960's can be recapitulated as a dynamic juxtaposition of black and white – a welding of opposites that while mutually dependent, are also autonomous. Following a thirty-five year relationship with the artist's work and a commitment to Abstract Expressionism lasting just as long, it was Stone's intention that this exhibition would perpetuate Kline's place at the forefront of the movement and as a fundamental figure in the dialogue about abstraction. Allan Stone acquired the work in 1996 and immediately included it in his Franz Kline Architecture & Atmosphere exhibition of 1997. Once in the collection of the esteemed Los Angeles collector Robert Halff, this painting was chosen for inclusion in some of the most important Franz Kline exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Franz Kline's Herald from 1953-1954 has a storied exhibition and provenance history.
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