concept:era modern
Mahoning
Oil and paper collage on canvas by Franz Kline, 1956. 203.5 × 254.3 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Kline's most celebrated painting; a large-scale black-and-white gestural composition often read as evoking industrial Pennsylvania.
Scholarly Significance
Abstract Expressionism — Franz Kline's most celebrated painting; exemplifies the monumental black-and-white gestural style.
Notes
- ·Mahoning is a county in northeast Ohio and a Lenape word meaning 'at the salt licks'; Kline grew up near the Mahoning Valley region of Pennsylvania.
- ·The title evokes industrial Pennsylvania without enforcing a literal reading; Kline insisted the black-and-white forms were purely spatial and structural rather than pictorial.
- ·The collaged paper elements are preparatory-drawing fragments incorporated into the final surface — the gesture of revision made visible.
- ·Purchased by the Whitney Museum from the 1956 Annual Exhibition, making it one of the few works Kline sold in a direct exhibition acquisition.
- ·Harold Rosenberg used Kline's work as a touchstone for his 'action painting' concept: the canvas as an arena rather than a picture.