2.2 abex new4

More Abstract Expressionists

Franz Kline (1910-‐1962)

Born in Willkes Barre PA

Heavily industrialized coal mining district

Fritz Goro, Franz Kline, 1954 Life.com


1930s painKng “American Scene” pictures

Franz Kline, Palmerton Pennsylvania, 1941 Smithsonian American Art Museum


Arrived at abstracKon by using an enlarger to project drawings on the wall

Franz Kline, The Chair, 1950 Walker Art Center

Franz Kline, Chief, 1950 Museum of Modern Art

Franz Kline, New York, New York, 1950 Albright Knox Gallery


Influenced by Japanese calligraphy

Franz Kline, Un9tled II, 1952 Museum of Modern Art


Large scale

Fritz Goro, Franz Kline in his studio with his black and white painKngs, 1954 Life.com

Franz Kline, Pain9ng Number 2, 1954 Museum of Modern Art

Franz Kline, Delaware Gap, 1958 Hirshhorn Museum

Franz Kline, Un9tled, 1957 Hirshhorn Museum

Robert Motherwell (1915-‐1991)

Studied philosophy and art history

Robert Motherwell in his 14th Street Studio, 1943 Image source: h[p://www.flickr.com/photos/51035595873@N01/168675291


1949 began series of “Elegies to the Spanish Republic” in response to the Spanish Civil War

Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 1953 Albright Knox Museum

“For those of my generaKon (I was 26 in 1936), this war was an event which emoKonally engaged each of us. It was a test of all humanisKc values, whether Spain was to enter the twenKeth century or to be supressed.” Robert Motherwell


Scale and color scheme recall Picasso’s Guernica

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1936

Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 1957-‐61 In the Museum of Modern Art


Universal language:

Black and white = “being and non-‐being, life and death"

Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 1957-‐61 Museum of Modern Art

“I discovered Black as one of my subjects -‐ and with black, the contrasKng white, a sense of life and death” Robert Motherwell


Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 108, 1965-‐67 Museum of Modern Art

“I take an elegy to be a funeral lamentaKon or funeral song for something one cared about . . . But the pictures are also general metaphors of the contrast between life and death, and their interrelaKon.” Robert Motherwell

“I think of my pictures as dramas; the shape of the pictures are the performers” Mark Rothko


Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 70, 1961 Metropolitan Museum

“The ‘Elegies’ correspond to something deep in my character . . . I seem to have found in them a certain archetypal form, in the Jungian sense. A lot of people who know nothing about modern art have been touched by the ‘Elegies,’ as one can be touched by Stonehenge or any other symbolic manifestaKon of the depths of the human spirit, without being an art criKc. Robert Motherwell

Clyfford S@ll (1904-‐1980) Born in North Dakota; spent most of his career in Washington State

Image source: h[p://www.rogue.ph/blogs/entry/sKll_amazing/

“These are not painKngs in the usual sense. They are life and death merging in a fearful union” Clyfford SKll

Clyfford S@ll (1904-‐1980) Large scale painKngs evoke geological phenomenon

Lava flows, the beginning or end of Kme

Clyfford SKll, Un9tled, 1958 Art InsKtute of Chicago

Clyfford SKll 1948-‐C, 1948 Hirshhorn Museum

Clyfford SKll 1950-‐A No. 2, 1950 Hirshhorn Museum

Clyfford S@ll (1904-‐1980) SKll’s work is omen likened to the romanKc vision of the Hudson River School

Their pictures expressed awe before the sublime landscape of the American west

Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, 1868 NaKonal Museum of American Art

Clyfford S@ll (1904-‐1980)

Clyfford SKll 1960 Hirshhorn Museum

“The tradiKon to which SKll's work is related is heroic landscape . . . But to read it directly as landscape violates its meaning. The cliffs and ravines of color, the jagged rims of blue or vermilion breaking through a matrix of dense enveloping black, are no metaphors of the Grand Canyon or the Rockies . . . They are meant to convey a sense of pantheisKc energy, of intense mood and vigorously arKculated feeling—to subsKtute, in fact, for nature it self.” Robert Hughes, “The Tempest in the Paint Pot,” Time Magazine, Nov 26, 1979 h[p://www.Kme.com/Kme/magazine/arKcle/0,9171,946425-‐2,00.html

David Smith (1906-‐1965) Born and raised in the midwest

Worked as a welder in an Indiana car factory

Irving Penn, David Smith, Bolton Landing, Lake George, New York, 1964 NaKonal Gallery of Art Image source: h[p://oseculoprodigioso.blogspot.com/2006/01/penn-‐irving-‐fotografia.html

David Smith (1906-‐1965) Early work influenced by Miro, Calder, Picasso, and Julio Gonazalez

David Smith, Home of the Welder, 1945 Tate Gallery

David Smith (1906-‐1965) Spectre series visualized evil as a primordial bird of prey wreaking havoc and destrucKon

David Smith, Study for Spectre Riding a Headless Horse, 1951-‐52 Hirshorn

David Smith, Jurassic Bird, 1945 David Smith, False Peace Spectre, 1945

David Smith, Jurassic Bird. 1945 h[p://www.davidsmithestate.org/bio_files/jurassic_bird.html

David Smith (1906-‐1965) 1945 moved to Bolton Landing with Dorothy Dehner

Dan Budnick, David Smith at Bolton Landing, 1962 Image source: h[p://www.davidsmithestate.org/index.html

David Smith (1906-‐1965) Hudson River Landscape is first experiment with “automaKsm”

David Smith, Hudson River Landscape, 1951 Whitney Museum

David Smith, Hudson River Landscape, 1951 Whitney Museum

“Smith said that it was inspired by a train journey from Albany to Poughkeepsie. It was a route he must have travelled hundreds of Kmes, as it leads from his home and studio at Bolton Landing along the 220 miles south to New York City. “Is Hudson River Landscape the Hudson River,” he wrote, “or is it the travel, the vision; or does it ma[er? The sculpture exists on its own, it is an enKty… I want you to travel, by percepKon, the path I travelled in creaKng it.”” h[p://www.aworldtowin.net/reviews/DavidSmith.html

David Smith (1906-‐1965) Tanktotem and SenKnel series – primiKve personages

David Smith, Tanktotem III, 1953

David Smith (1906-‐1965) Smith’s totemic figures are like personages, asserKng their presence in the void

Photograph of sculptures at Bolton Landing Image source: h[p://www.davidsmithestate.org/bio_files/sculpture_group1955.html

David Smith (1906-‐1965)

“It was the soar of the human figure that held him, the uncompromising thrust it makes, the fight it carries on with the force of gravity” Clement Greenberg

Photograph of sculptures at Bolton Landing Image source: h[p://www.davidsmithestate.org/bio_files/sculpture_group1955.html

David Smith (1906-‐1965) The Cubi series consists of 28 monumental stainless steel sculptures that Smith worked on from 1961 unKl his death in a car accident in 1965

David Smith, Cubi XVII, 1963 Dallas Museum

David Smith (1906-‐1965) Like the Tanktotems and Sen9nels, they suggest human personages

But they have become more geometric, architectural, and heroic

David Smith, Cubi XIX, 1964 Tate Gallery

Education

2.2 abex new4