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Erika Giovanna Klien - A Retrospective Through Drawing
Press Release
An exhibition of drawings by Erika Giovanni Klien will open at the Rachel Adler Gallery on October 21 and continue through December 22, 1989
Erika Giovanni Klien, born in 1900 in Austria, was a leading exponent of a little known yet innovative movement Kinetismus. Invented by Professor Frank Cizek during the early part of the century in Vienna, his method was primarily concerned with capturing simultaneous movement yet unlike the Futurists, the group was intent on seizing the flow of movement and its varying rhythms with a distinct clarity rather than merely depicting the impression of movement. As stated in the Yale Univesity Societe Anonyme catalogue Cizek "...had already incorporated Cubism into an approach to art based on the use of abstract forms to embody specific emotions-fear,
calm, rapture. He subsequently encouraged his students to express dynamism in their work through study of forms in motion. Klien responded by abstracting her subjects into kaleidoscopic arrangements of faceted planes; the images often seem to change, chameleonlike, as the viewer's eye seeks to decipher their complex interweaving."
The 46 drawings exhibited, dating from 1919 to 1953, trace Klien's beginnings and her emergence as a major draughtsman and interpreter of movement within the Kinetismus School. After having studied at the Vienna School of Applied Arts under Franz Cizek, Klien went on to become an artist and teacher. In 1929 she moved to the United States and became an American citizen in 1938. She died in New York in 1957. While living in the United States she taught at various schools among them, the New School for Social Research, the Spence Schol and the Dalton School. Included in this exhibition are some rare drawings of New York City executed in the Kinetismus method. As Klien herself started, "I am painting movement, the movement of the human body; the movement of birds and of plants; the movement of the machine and abstract movement; and finally, the movement of light - all is movement."
Klien was recently the object of a major retrospective at the Museum of 20th Century in Vienna, and other smaller exhibitions in Germany and Austria within the last year. The exhibition at the Rachel Adler Gallery marks her first retrospective in the United States. Klien is represented in numerous museum collections including the Yale University Societe Anonyme Collection and the Museum of Modern Art, who along with several private collectors have loaned important works to this exhibition.
Erika Giovanna Klien |
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Erika Giovanna Klien
Retrospective of Drawings
essay by Dr. Marietta
Mautner Markhof (1989)
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