Medard Klein (1905 - 2002)

Arrangement (Untitled), c. 1945, oil on canvas board, signed lower right, 22 x 30 inches, presented in an older perhaps original frame

$3800

Medard Klein was an American abstract painter and one of the pioneering figures of non-objective art in the Midwest. Born in Appleton, Wisconsin, Klein moved to Chicago in his early twenties. He received formal training at several of the city’s leading institutions. He first studied at the School of the Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he worked under painter Edmund Giesbert. He later attended the National Academy of Art, studying with Audubon Tyler, and continued his education at the Chicago Studio School of Art, where he trained under noted muralist John W. Norton. During the late 1930s Klein abandoned representational painting in favor of pure abstraction. Deeply inspired by classical music and psychology, he sought to create rhythms, emotions, and subconscious experiences rather than depict the visible world. His mature paintings employed floating biomorphic shapes, delicate calligraphic lines, transparent layers of color, and carefully balanced geometric structures, all attributes which are present in Arrangement (Untitled). While his work reveals the influence of Cubism, Surrealism, and the Bauhaus—particularly the ideas of László Moholy-Nagy—his paintings remain highly individual, emphasizing movement, harmony, and spatial ambiguity.

Klein achieved considerable national recognition during the 1930s and 1940s. He exhibited at many of the country’s leading institutions, including the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (now the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Art (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Oakland Art Gallery, the Laguna Beach Art Association, the Institute of Design in Chicago, and the Library of Congress. Klein’s work is represented in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (through its historic holdings from the Museum of Non-Objective Painting), the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Library of Congress. He is listed in Who Was Who in American Art and all other standard references.