NYAB Event - Franz Kline "Coal and Steel"

Franz Kline "Coal and Steel"

Baruch College/Sidney Mishkin Gallery

This event has ended.

Baruch College presents the exhibition Franz Kline: Coal and Steel at the Mishkin Gallery.

Franz Kline (1910-1962), one of the most famous painters of the mid-twentieth century, is well known for his large, abstract, black and white paintings. However, his early representational work is almost unknown. Franz Kline: Coal and Steel specifically focuses on Kline's progression from representation to abstraction by emphasizing his early work, and the prominence of his often overlooked use of coal mining imagery throughout his career.

Many of Kline's rarely seen landscapes and portraits from coal country are on display at the Mishkin Gallery. The exhibition juxtaposes Kline's figurative and abstract works in order to focus specifically on his evolution of style, revealing how his later non-representational painting was deeply rooted in his own early experience in Pennsylvania mining country. Works like Untitled (Locomotive), ca. 1945-47, and Study for Caboose, 1961, show how Kline was experimenting with black and white, near-abstraction throughout his career. Even the black and white color of his works recalls the monochrome landscape of coal country.

Franz Kline: Coal and Steel, curated by Robert S. Mattison, features 49 paintings and drawings by Franz Kline, along with supplementary photographs, graphic works, and other documentary materials. There are several works on loan from the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., along with rarely seen paintings belonging to private collectors. Works in the exhibition include Chief (Train) (1942), Street Scene Greenwich Village (1943), Self-Portrait (1946), Pennsylvania Landscape (1948-49), and Study for Caboose (1961), among others.

In addition, this exhibition includes several documentary photographs of Pennsylvania anthracite mines and miners by photographer George Harvan. His photographs provide a clear, visual record of the type of environment–the coal chutes, trains, and smokestacks–with which Kline would have been familiar.