Kline, Franz

Happy Birthday Jess.  Red paint on butcher's paper, boldly signed ("FK") in the lower left corner also in red, with some traces of the artist's footprints, 114 3/8 x 47 3/4 in.; 2906 x 1212 mm, laid down on canvas; some small tears and losses at edges.  Framed and glazed.

Jess and Anthony Scippia (gift from the artist)

Kingsley, The Turning Point: the Abstract Expressionists and the Transformation of American Art (1992), p.297

mounted on canvas an framed; tiny tears and looses.
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A monumental Abstract Expressionist birthday card by Franz Kline, with a large firey monogram in the lower left corner.  This is believed to be the largest surviving work on paper by the artist.

The story behind this unusual work is of great interest.  Anthony Scippia was the nephew of sculptor Philip Pavia, who was also moderator of the Abstract Expressionist social organization known simply as The Club.  Pavia introduced his nephew to his painter friends in the late 1940's.  Scippia lived and worked in Greenwich Village and came to know some of the artists well, especially Franz Kline.  He also assisted his uncle with the production of the art historical magazine It Is, which featured numerous reproductions of Kline's work.

Scippia remembers the creation of the work thus: "In the Fall of 1959, I visited Franz one afternoon at his Village studio.  As we chatted, had a couple of drinks and watched a World Series baseball game, I mentioned to him that it was my girlfriend's birthday.  He offered to make a birthday card for her.  We then spread out a roll of brown construction paper on the floor, and in between drinks, I watched his technique as he created this famous 'Happy Birthday Jess' painting.  The paper being ten feet long, [it] even included a few of Franz's footprints

"Eventually my girlfriend became my wife and we framed this large painting, which has been the source of many favorable comments and we have truly enjoyed the painting for fifty years."

The vivid red paint used for the greeting is the same red paint Kline used for his important canvas Harley Red (sold Sotheby's New York, 9 November 2005, lot 25), which he was working on at the time and which he dated 1959-60.  It can also be found in another work of 1959, Dahlia (Whitney Museum).  Of Kline's use of color in this period, April Kingsley has written, "Kline's color, in which purples and reds, yellows, oranges and greens clash for dominance, isn't like anyone's else's.  Kline loved Matisse, but his color doesn't have the sparkling Mediterranean limpidity of the French master.  Instead, some of New York City's grime, the gritty matter with which its inhabitants are constantly showered and which seemed to have solidified in Kline's blacks, clings to his colors."  The brushwork is action painting at its best, and the simple greeting provides a red lexicon of incendiary but joyful gestures.

A vivid and spontaneous demonstration of Kline's dramatic brushwork, executed in his own distinctive Manhattan red. A birthday greeting on a heroic scale.