Product Description

Acclaimed as the definitive volume on Kline, this book provides firsthand accounts of his Bohemian life and powerful work.

Franz Kline spent years struggling to find a style for himself and then achieved "overnight success" with his dramatic black and white abstractions. They were, in fact, so successful that they overwhelmed every other aspect of Kline's art, and as a result he has been oversimplified and underestimated. Now, after nearly twenty years of research, Harry F. Gaugh has written the definitive volume on Kline, which provides the first comprehensive view of his life and work, and reveals how unexpectedly complex they both were.

Using interviews and correspondence with dozens of Kline's friends and critics, and quoting from the artist's own letters, the author has created an evocative portrait of Kline's evolution from an ambitious art student in Boston and London to a penniless Greenwich Village artist painting murals in bars just to pay the rent, and finally to a mature artist in command of his own unique and hard-won style. Kline made his initial, admittedly modest, reputation as a figurative artist, and rare photographs of that early work--sketches from life-drawing class, portraits of Nijinsky, scenes of the Pennsylvania countryside--offer an intriguing background for his later paintings. Not until his late thirties did Kline begin to develop an abstract mode, working his way through a series of strikingly dissimilar styles. Dr. Gaugh illuminates how talent, training, experimentation, the influence of fellow artists, and pure chance interacted to yield the famous black and white abstractions. When he died in 1962, Kline had begun exploring the potential of vibrant color, and the vivid full-color reproductions of his late paintings make poignantly clear how much the art world lost with his death at the relatively young age of fifty-one.

With its detailed yet thoroughly readable text and 170 illustrations (many never before published) this comprehensive volume brings to light much new information about Kline and enriches the reader's appreciation and understanding of his art. Ê Other Details: 170 illustrations, 70 in full color. 9 x 11" trim size. First published 1985.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #596698 in Books
• Published on: 1994-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From Library Journal
This was hailed as the definitive volume on artist Kline at its 1985 debut. Along with 170 illustrations (100 color, 70 b&w), the book includes interviews with Kline's friends and critics as well as material from his letters.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"A sympathetic, though unsparing, account of the artist's life is interwoven expertly with the history of his work, resulting in an exemplary study of a contemporary painter's career." (San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle)

About the Author
Dr. Harry F. Gaugh, an art historian specializing in postwar American art, taught at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, until his death in 1992.

Customer Reviews

A COMPELLING STUDY
Franz Kline (1910 - 1962), surely one of the most individual artists, began as a representational painter, focusing largely on landscapes. It was in the latter 1940s that he began his landmark exploration of abstractionism, achieving plaudits with his black and white presentations.

Art historian and teacher Dr. Harry Gaugh spent some two decades researching the life and work of Kline. This amazing volume is testament to his study. "Franz Kline" holds over 170 illustrations and a fascinating account of the life of this landmark artist who died far too young at 51 years of age.

Dr. Gaugh utilizes interviews and correspondence (including Kline's personal letters) to offer a vivid picture of the artist as a student in Boston and London , then later as a part of Greenwich Village where he executed bar murals to keep the wolf from the door.

Kline's development as an artist is a compelling study, and an evocation of an important time in our cultural history.

- Gail Cooke

Complete Kline
This book is a very complete and enlightening survey of Kline's art. The author chronogically covers all the aspects of the artist's oeuvre and, though it was written some 22 years ago, this publication is a must-have for anyone interested in the abstract expressionist movement. Many major paintings are thoroughly described, the text quotes many friends of Kline's (dealers and critics)stating previously unpublished opinions and is a rich trove of information.

The illustrations are unfortunately not as good as they would have been had the book been published more recently, which is why I do not give it 5 stars.