L&M Arts is proud to bring together a select group of works by the extraordinary Abstract Expressionist painter Franz Kline as a potent reminder both of his incredible vitality and of the significant influence his work continues to exert on so many successive artists. We are especially proud to have the opportunity and privilege of showing two works, "Heaume," 1958, and "Black Star," 1959, which have never before seen public exhibition.

Another important work to be exhibited is 1960's "Diamond," whose history parallels the development of Kline's career. The painting is one of the last in a loosely connected series based on the Black Diamond, a diesel train which ran through the countryside of Kline's family's home in Pennsylvania. Kline first sketched this train from life, and later included it in several increasingly abstracted landscapes. By the time he painted "Diamond," Kline had undergone what Elaine de Kooning called an "instantaneous conversion" to a bold, strongly contrasted abstract style. The palette here is equally brutal and subtle, comprised of blacks and whites with subtle accents of blue, blue-green and pink, and the specific details of the subject have been reduced to a weighty, lurching structure which both holds and transmits the velocity and force of the actual train.

We hope that this show will invite a re-reading of these strikingly contemporary paintings and their explorations of both micro- and macroscopic extremes of line, weight, and tension; and that we will be reminded of and delighted by the ongoing and continually generative newness of Franz Kline.

L&M Arts is located at 45 East 78th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00-5:30. For further information, please contact Leila Saadai, at the gallery via phone at 212-861-0020 or via email at lsaadai@lmgallery.com.