The Yale University Art Gallery has received an extraordinary gift from the Friday Foundation honoring the legacy of late Seattle philanthropists Jane Lang Davis and Richard E. Lang. The Lang collection is one of the most important private collections of 20th-century art in the country, with masterworks by renowned postwar American and European artists and incredible examples of Abstract Expressionism. The gift from the Friday Foundation includes six artworks by Franz Kline (1910–1962) and Mark Rothko (1903–1970). It augments the Gallery’s collection of midcentury European and American art and brings increased attention to these two remarkable artists and their range of artistic output. With this gift, the Gallery’s holdings of Kline’s and Rothko’s paintings and drawings have broadened significantly and now provide a more nuanced view of the artists’ styles, techniques, and overlapping interests—for example, in psychology and the theater. Kline’s Portrait of Nijinsky (1942) and Rothko’s untitled painting from 1941–42, both of which address such subjects, are the earliest paintings by these artists to enter the Gallery’s collection, and Rothko’s No. 11 (Yellow, Green, and Black) (1950) is now the earliest of his famous Color Field paintings in the museum’s collection. The works on paper from the Friday Foundation, such as an untitled drawing by Kline from 1961, hint at the human figure, revealing how its presence endured well after the artist had seemingly abandoned representation for large-scale abstractions featuring gestural brushwork.
Franz Kline, Untitled, 1961. Oil and brush on paper. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of the Friday Foundation in honor of Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis. © 2021 The Franz Kline Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Mark Rothko, No. 11 (Yellow, Green, and Black), 1950. Oil on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of the Friday Foundation in honor of Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis. © 2021 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York