Franz Kline

Franz Kline was born in 1910 and died on May 13, 1962. He began his career with figurative work, much of it carrying Social Realist references to the concerns of the urban lower classes, before a 1950 showing at the Egan Gallery in New York established him among the leading practitioners of Abstract Expressionism. For the following twelve years he painted with large-scale gestural strokes, frequently restricting his palette to black and white, and was associated with the informal group known as the New York School. The Whitney Museum of American Art holds Mahoning and the small ink study for it.