Franz Kline
20 October 2004 – 30 January 2005
Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea
Piazza Mafalda di Savoia – 10098 Rivoli (Turin)
tel. +39/011.9565220
info [at] castellodirivoli.org
Press preview: Monday October 18, 2004 – 11:30 a.m.
photo: Bert Stern Franz Kline 1910-1962
Curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the opening of a comprehensive and wide-ranging historical exhibition devoted to the major American artist Franz Kline (1910-1962). Kline was born on May 23, 1910 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. In the late 1930s and during the 1940s he painted urban landscapes of New York and of the mining region where he was raised. During this same period he was commissioned to paint murals and portraits. In the mid-’40s he developed an interest in the expressive possibilities of abstraction, reducing and simplifying the compositional elements of his early realist style, where he still made use of color and figuration. His participation in the renowned Ninth Street Show and in American Vanguard Art for Paris Exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery confirmed his status as one of the most important figures in the emerging American Abstract Expressionism movement. In the mid-’50s Kline reintroduced color into his work, initially unsystematically, then in increasingly broad segments. In the decade preceding his death his work was included in the most important group exhibitions, organized by the most prestigious international institutions, such as the Venice Biennale (1956 and 1960) and the Carnegie International (1955, 1958, and 1961). He died on May 13, 1962 in New York.
This is the first European exhibition since 1994 to analyze both the core group of late abstract works, beginning in the ’40s, and the early, somber works of a realist nature by this extraordinary protagonist of contemporary art.
One hundred essential works by Kline will be on view at Castello di Rivoli, including paintings, drawings, pastels, watercolors, gouaches, and documentary materials from major public and private collections. To illustrate all the most significant phases of Kline’s work, the exhibition includes early oil paintings from the late 1930s and the 1940s, where it is possible to detect his realist inspiration, the large black and white works that developed in the context of Abstract Expressionism, and the late works, where the artist returned to the use of color.
A 500-page color catalogue, published on the occasion of the exhibition, includes critical essays by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, David Anfam, and Dore Ashton and reproductions of the works in the exhibition and all the fundamental canvases painted by the artist throughout his lifetime.
This exhibition is the pivotal event among the exhibitions organized to mark the twentieth anniversary of Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened in 1984.
The exhibition has been made possible thanks to:
Regione Piemonte, Compagnia di San Paolo, Fondazione CRT