Soon after it was made, this celebrated canvas was shown at the Whitney Museum Annual, and thereafter in almost every retrospective of Kline’s work. During his day,
and for long after, Kline was considered a pre-eminent action painter, a key member of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. This painting, with its bold strokes of black enamel painted with a house-painter’s brush, epitomizes that style. As the critic Paul Brach wrote: “Painting, drawing and writing; the structure and
its meaning; the symbol and the physical fact—are all united in a single gesture. And though it is deceptively spontaneous in appearance, that gesture is the millionth try—the final effort with all its failures behind it.”
Yet, despite the rhetoric, Kline always worked from small studies, he always made considerable revisions to his canvas, and his art is therefore anything but spontaneous.
He painted this work on a window shade.

Inscription: Inscribed (on verso of canvas): FRANZ KLINE / EGAN GALLERY

Charles Egan Gallery, New York, 1952; Mr. and Mrs. Jay Z. Steinberg, Chicago, purchased from Egan, likely in spring 1954 - gift of Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006.

1952 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 6, 1952-January 4, 1953, exh. cat., checklist no. 73.

"Franz Kline," Charles Egan Gallery, New York, April 13-May 8, 1954 (no catalogue).

61st American Exhibition: Paintings & Sculpture, The Art Institute of Chicago, October 21-December 5, 1954, exh. cat., checklist no. 76.

55 Americans '55, Milwaukee Art Institute, September 9- October 23, 1955, exh. cat., no. 30.

Franz Kline, 1910-1962, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 1-November 24, 1968; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, December 17, 1968-January 26, 1969; San Francisco Museum of Art, February 21-March 30, 1969; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, April 12-May 25, 1969, exh. cat. by John Gordon [exhibited in Chicago venue only].

An American Choice: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 21-September 27, 1981, exh. cat. by William S. Lieberman, pp. 67 (ill.), 155.

Franz Kline: Black and White, 1950-1961, Menil Collection, Houston, September 8-November 27, 1994, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, December 16, 1994-March 5, 1995, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, March 25-June 4, 1995, exh. cat. by David Anfam (author), David Whitney (guest curator for the Menil Collection), Walter Hopps, Susan Davidson, no. 18, pp. 15 (essay by David Anfam), 53 (ill. pl. 18) 112 [exhibited in Chicago venue only].

Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September 18, 2007 - February 3, 2008, exh. cat. edited by Gary Tinterow, Lisa Mintz Messinger, and Nan Rosenthal, no. 42, pp. 131-134 (ill.; essay by Pepe Karmel).

Rudi Blesh, Modern Art U.S.A.: Men, Rebellion, Conquest, 1900-1956 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), ill. opposite p. 252.

Judith Goldman, "Collecting in Chicago: Love Affairs with Art," Artnews, vol. 78, no. 2, February 1979, p. 49.

Alice Hess, "Great Private Collections: A Chicago Visionary," Saturday Review, 7, no. 14, October 1980, pp. 3, 72-75.

Eugene Victor Thaw, "The Abstract Expressionists," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., vol. 44, no. 3, Winter 1986/87, pp. 47, 48 (ill. no. 39).

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, ed., Franz Kline, 1910-1962, exh. cat. (Milan: Skira, 2004), p. 313 (ill.).