Franz Kline Quotes on Art

Franz Kline was an American abstract painter linked to the abstract expressionist movement and the action painters. He is best known for his gestural black strokes of paint on white backgrounds which are almost calligraphic in nature. He produced paintings, collages, and works on paper. Famous Franz Kline paintings include “Shenandoah”, “Flanders”, “Green Cross”, “New York, N.Y.”, and “Painting Number 2”.

Mini biography: Born Franz Kline on the 23rd of May, 1912 in Wilkes-Barre, in Eastern Pennsylvania, United States of America. His mother was Anne Kline and his father was Anthony Kline. Franz Kline died of rheumatic heart disease on the 13th of May, 1962 in New York City, New York, U.S.A. Kline was 51 years old when he passed away.

Franz Kline Art Quotes

The final test of a painting, theirs, mine, any other, is: does the painter’s emotions come across? Franz Kline

I rather feel that painting is a form of drawing and the painting that I like has a form of drawing to it. I don’t see how it could be disassociated from the nature of drawing. Franz Kline

You instinctively like what you can’t do. Franz Kline

You don’t make the letter ‘C’ and then fill the white in the circle. When people describe forms of painting in the calligraphic sense they really mean the linear, inscribing a drawing and so on. No, I didn’t have this feeling that painting was the equalization of the proportions of black or the design of black against a form of white; but, in a lot of cases, apparently it does look that way. Franz Kline

My old landscapes of Pennsylvania are worth so much now that I have to hide them, so I don’t get put in an even higher tax bracket. For years nobody would pay a dime for them. They’re still the same paintings. They didn’t get any better. I treasure them as much as my recent black and white abstracts. Franz Kline

People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it,but this is not true.I paint the white as well as the black and the white is just as important.
Franz Kline

It wasn’t a question of deciding to do black-and-white painting. I think there was a time when the original forms that finally came out in black and white were in color and then as time went on I painted them out and made them black and white. And then, when they got that way, I just liked them, you know Franz Kline

My dealer was furious when I showed him my latest works. I’m returning to color. He tells me to ride it out and change when the fashion change. I told him no! I told him I paint each painting from the heart. I have followed my heart all my life. Franz Kline

I don’t think of my work as calligraphic. Critics also describe Jackson and De Kooning as calligraphic painters but calligraphy has nothing to do with us. It’s interesting that the Oriental critics never say this. The Oriental idea of space is an infinite space; it is not painted space, and ours is. Franz Kline

If I feel a painting I’m working on doesn’t have imagery or emotion, I paint it out and work over it until it does.
Franz Kline

I rather imagine as people have come from the tradition of looking at drawing, they look at the lines, until you got to art school and then the drawing teacher tells you to look at the white spaces in it; but I didn’t think about the black-and-white paintings as coming that way. Franz Kline

I do both: I make preliminary drawings, other times I paint directly, other times I start a painting and then paint it out so that it becomes another painting or nothing at all. If a painting doesn’t work, throw it out. When I work from preliminary sketches, I don’t just enlarge these drawings, but plan my areas in a large painting by using small drawings for separate areas. I combine them in a final painting, often adding to or subtracting from the original sketches. Franz Kline

Art Quotes About Franz Kline

Light is something very special. It has nothing to do with white. Either you see it or you don’t. De la Tour doesn’t have light; Monet hasn’t any light. Matisse, Goya, Chardin, Van Gogh, Sam Francis, Kline have it. But it has nothing to do with being the best painter at all. Joan Mitchell

More on Abstract Artist Franz Kline

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For more on the famous American abstract painter here’s three excellent Franz Kline books: “Franz Kline“, “Franz Kline in Coal Country“, and “Life, Death, Love, Hate, Pleasure, Pain: Selected Works from the Museum of Contemporary Art“.