Shovel

Franz Klines Shovel from 1958 is a brush and ink drawing on paper that captures the artists signature gestural style in a medium that reveals the direct relationship between his large-scale paintings and his more intimate works on paper. Klines black and white paintings of the 1950s, with their sweeping brushstrokes that evoke industrial girders, railroad tracks, and architectural structures, are among the most recognizable images of Abstract Expressionism, and his drawings on paper provide a window into the working process that generated them. The title Shovel connects the abstract gestural form to a specific object, a practice Kline occasionally employed that links his work to the tradition of American industrial iconography represented by Charles Sheeler and other Precisionists. The brush and ink medium, with its capacity for both broad, wet strokes and sharp, dry accents, allows Kline to compress the monumentality of his paintings into a format that can be held in the hand, producing all the visual force of the large-scale work in a space small enough to be grasped at a single glance. The oil staining visible on the paper reveals that this drawing was made in a studio where paintings were also in progress, and the transfer of pigment between supports suggests the fluid interchange between drawing and painting that characterized Klines practice. The cream wove paper, laid down on board for support, provides a warm ground that contrasts with the stark black of the ink.

Klines brush and ink drawings are essential for understanding the relationship between monumentality and intimacy in Abstract Expressionism, demonstrating that the force of his large-scale paintings was generated through a drawing practice that could compress the same gestures into a palm-sized format. His influence on the development of gestural abstraction extends internationally.

A brush and ink drawing by Kline that compresses the monumentality of his black-and-white paintings into an intimate format, connecting abstract gestural form to the industrial object suggested by the title and revealing the interchange between drawing and painting in his practice.