The Vital Gesture Franz Kline - Softcover

Gaugh, Harry F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0896595773 ISBN 13: 9780896595774

Publisher: Abbeville Press, 1985

Synopsis

4to, stiff pictorial wrappers. 192 pp, 170 illustratons (70 in color), chronology, exhibition list, bibliography, index.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Kline's fame rests on his dramatic black-and-white abstract paintings. Packed with raw energy, they look like a clash of elemental forces. This attractive, readable monograph, which accompanies a touring exhibition, shows that Kline floundered and was not an especially original painter until he discovered his black-and-white style. Among the 70 color plates and 100 halftones are agreeable figurative pictures, murals for Greenwich Village bars that he painted to pay the rent, landscapes of the Pennsylvania coal country where he grew up and obsessive portraits of Nijinsky, which became alternative self-portraits. Critics have read into the black-and-white and color abstractions noble or tragic faces, desolate landscapes or meditations on the American dream of power used wisely. Their purity and power comes across in the many full-page reproductions. December
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Already an acknowledged American master of abstract painting at the time of his death in 1962, Kline has since then become increasingly highly regarded and his works have been collected by museums throughout the world. This volume has been published on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of Kline's work showing in Cincinnati, San Francisco, and Philadelphia this year and next. Gaugh presents a general chronological survey of Kline's life and the development of his art, with a generous number of reproductions of both the artist's "signature" black-and-white canvases and his less well known work with color. The volume works very well as an introduction to Kline and an overview of his work and would be suitable for students and interested general readers as well as for specialists. Kathryn W. Finkelstein, M.L.S., Cincinnati
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Abbeville Press
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0896595773
• ISBN 13: 9780896595774
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 189