Untitled [verso]

1939

Moving to New York and working for a scenic designer

In 1939 Kline moves to New York City and works for a scenic designer. It is here that he develops his artistic techniques and gains recognition as a significant artist; in the late 1930s and early 1940s he paints figurative landscapes and cityscapes as well as commissioned portraits and murals.

1948

Projecting a sketch on the wall: de Kooning's advice

According to Elaine de Kooning, in 1948 Willem de Kooning advises an artistically frustrated Kline to project a sketch onto his studio wall with a Bell-Opticon projector: a four-by-five-inch black drawing of a rocking chair swells into gigantic strokes, and it is widely believed that Kline then turns to large-scale abstract works. Willem himself conceded that working out this vision took considerable time.

1948–1950

The turn to black-and-white abstraction

Over the next two years Kline's brushstrokes become completely non-representative, fluid and dynamic, and he begins painting only in black and white: for him the white is just as important as the black. Viewers also see references to Japanese calligraphy in these paintings, through his exchange with the avant-garde group Bokujinkai and its leader Morita Shiryu, although Kline later denied the connection.

16 October – 4 November 1950

First solo show at the Charles Egan Gallery

At the Charles Egan Gallery in New York Kline's first one-man show opens: eleven abstract paintings with very little colour — brown underpainting near the bottom of “Nijinsky” and fleeting hints of green in “Leda”. Afterwards he is dubbed the “black and white artist”, a label by which he sometimes feels restricted.