William Klein at Howard Greenberg Gallery

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‘William Klein: Paintings, Etc.’

1 March– 27 April 2013

An exhibition of rarely seen photographs and paintings by artist William Klein, one of the leading photographers of the post-war era as well as an influential filmmaker, painter, and graphic artist,will be on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, from 1 March– 27 April 2013.

‘William Klein: Paintings, Etc.’ will unveil his early paintings and experiments in photography spanning nearly half a century from the 1940s through 1990. The foundations of his visual language are evident as his ever-progressive trajectory is traced through painting, photography, books, and film.

The exhibition is accompanied by two new books on William Klein, PAINTINGS, ETC. (Contrasto, December 2012) and the forthcoming William Klein: ABC (Abrams, March 2013). An exhibition was held recently at Tate Modern. A recent BBC documentary, The Many Lives of William Klein, chronicled artist’s career from Paris, where he currently lives.

A native New Yorker, William Klein began his career as a painter, first studying with Fernand Léger, yet his paintings have scarcely been seen or published since they were first exhibited in the early 1950s.Together with paintings from the late 1940s and early 1950s, the exhibition will include abstract silver gelatin photomurals, and the first in a series of monumental painted ‘Mural Projects’, all conceived between 1950 and 1953, and only now realized at full scale. These will be shown alongside his early black and white images of New York, fashion with light drawings from the 1960s, and ‘Painted Contacts’,enamel painting on blown-up contact sheet outtakes from the 1960s through 1990.

An additional exhibition from 1 March – 23 March in Howard Greenberg Two, next to the main gallery, will showcase Klein’s pioneering New York street photography from the 1950s. Klein was hired as a photographer for Vogue magazine in 1956, and his groundbreaking fashion photography, which took the models out of the studio and onto the streets, will also be on view.

The exhibition and accompanying publication are co-produced by Howard Greenberg Gallery and HackelBury Fine Art Ltd., London.

Howard Greenberg Gallery is located at 41 East 57th Street, Suite 1406, New York.