Franz Kline was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He studied at the Art Students League in New York (1931-1935) and, over the next three years, at the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London. At the end of this experience, in 1939, he finally returned to New York.
Between the 1930s and 1940s, Kline’s works remained essentially representational: industrial landscapes recalling those of his native Pennsylvania, animated subjects, murals, and portraits. In the 1940s, Kline found interest in Japanese art and became also acquainted with Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. By the end of the decade, the artist had developed his own abstract identity, characterized by decisive black and white marks. Between 1938 and 1942, he exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York. His first solo exhibition was organized in 1950 at the Egan Gallery in New York. This very valuable opportunity established Kline as one of the leading exponents of Abstract Expressionism. Around the mid-1950s, he added color to black and white, and his works were exhibited at the 9th Street Art Exhibition (1951), at MoMA in the exhibition Twelve Americans (1956), at Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome (1958), at Galleria del Naviglio in Milan (1958) and at the XXX Edition of the Venice Art Biennale (1960).
Like Pollock, Kline was labeled as an action painter. His works, however, were often the result of well-calculated gestures, of studied spontaneity: prior to executing his final compositions on canvas, he meticulously rehearsed what was to be the final result on canvas.
Kline’s works is said to have been profoundly influenced by Willem de Konning. In 1948, de Kooning suggested to Kline to take one of his preparatory sketches and project it onto a wall. Kline observed that the projected image, once translated onto a larger scale, evolved into a series of bold brushstrokes that transcended the original source. From that moment on, Kline adopted this method, creating paintings inspired by the dynamic compositions projected on the wall.
He eventually won several awards such as the “S. J. Wallace Truman” Award of the National Academy of Design in New York (1944), the Chicago Art Institute Award (1957), and the Amerikanische Erziehungsministeriums Award (1960).