Franz Kline. Like many fellow Abstract Expressionists, such as De Kooning and Mark Rothko, Kline took his job in a number of distinct directions in the late 1950s.
He produced a succession of extensive, horizontally oriented functions called the"wall paintings" (1959--61), the monumentality of that could be echoed in later paintings by Robert Motherwell and Clyfford Still. He also introduced harsh and strident colour, as in King Oliver (1958). He spent a month in Europe, travel mostly in Italy, in 1960. Two decades later, in the peak of his profession, Kline died of heart failure on May 13, 1962, in New York. Franz Kline abstract artwork In the decade before his death, Kline's work was included in several international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1956, 1960); Documenta, Kassel, West Germany (1959); São Paulo Biennial (1957); and Whitney Annuals and Biennials (1952, 1953, 1955, 1961).