Photo: Spike Mafford / Zocalo Studios. Courtesy of the Friday Foundation

Painting No. 11

Date1951

Label TextEarlier in his career, Kline was interested in ballet and dance, influenced by his wife Elizabeth, who was dancer. While working as a commercial illustrator in the early 1940s, he painted several captivating portraits of the legendary Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. His signature paintings of black brushwork on expansive fields of cream and white, which he began in 1947, seem to recast movement in the abstract. “I’m not a symbolist. In other words, these are painting experiences. I don’t decide in advance that I’m going to paint a definite experience, but in the act of painting it becomes a definite experience for me.” The black cipher in Painting No. 11 appears to vibrate and move, spanning the expanse of the canvas. A year after Kline made this painting, critic Harold Rosenberg published his essay “The American Action Painters,” which posited that the new generation expressed their individuality through gesture and action on the field of the canvas.

Object number2020.14.12

ProvenanceThe artist; Estate of the artist; [Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York]; purchased from gallery by Jane and Richard E. Lang, Seattle, Washington, 1970; Friday Foundation, Seattle, Washington, 2018; to Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 2020

Photo CreditPhoto: Spike Mafford / Zocalo Studios. Courtesy of the Friday Foundation

Exhibition HistoryNew York, New York, Egan Gallery, Franz Kline, 1951. New York, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Franz Kline, 1910–1962, Oct. 1 - Nov. 24, 1968 (Dallas, Texas, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dec. 17, 1968 - Jan. 26, 1969; San Francisco, California, San Francisco Museum of Art, Feb. 21 - Mar. 30, 1969; Chicago, Illinois, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Apr. 12 - May 25, 1969). Cat. no. 47. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, American Art: Third Quarter Century, Aug. 22 - Oct. 14, 1973. Cat. no. 33, pp. 18, 99, reproduced. Washington, D.C., National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, America as Art, Apr. 30 - Nov. 7, 1976. Cat. no. 328, reproduced p. 274. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Franz Kline: The Color Abstractions, Sept. 27 - Nov. 25, 1979, organized and exhibited by the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (Houston, Texas, Institute for the Arts, Rice University; Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) [Painting No. 11 shown in Seattle only]. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, The Richard and Jane Lang Collection, Feb. 2 - Apr. 1, 1984. Cat. no. 25, pp. 38-39, reproduced. Houston, Texas, Menil Collection, Franz Kline: Black and White, 1950–1961, Sept. 9 - Nov 27, 1994 (New York, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Dec. 16, 1994- Mar. 5, 1995; Chicago, Illinois, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Mar. 25 - June 4, 1995) Cat. no. 6, p. 112, reproduced p. 41. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, SAM at 75: Building a Collection for Seattle, May 5 - Sept. 9, 2007. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Frisson: The Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis Collection, Oct. 15, 2021 - Nov. 27, 2022. Text by David Anfam. No cat. no., pp. 15, 28, 41, 82-89, 177, 188, reproduced pp. 2 (detail), 14 (fig. 4), 83 (pl. 5), 182. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Reverberations: Contemporary Art and Modern Classics, Dec. 22, 2022 - ongoing.Published ReferencesA Community of Collectors: 75th Anniversary Gifts to the Seattle Art Museum. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum and University of Washington Press, 2008. Reproduced p. 26.

Credit LineGift of the Friday Foundation in honor of Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis

Dimensions61 x 82 1/4 in. (155 x 208.9 cm)

MediumOil on canvas