GLORIA KLEIN
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Biography • Gloria Klein (1936-2021)
Gloria Klein was born in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BA in Economics from Brooklyn College, City University of New York (1959). She studied art at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art (1959 – 1960) and the Art Students League (1962, 1968) in New York. She studied privately with Evsa Model (1969-1970) for a year. Then, in 1970 she enrolled at Hunter College, obtaining an MA from Hunter College where she studied with color artist Robert Swain.
Klein is considered a member of both the Pattern and Decoration movement and the Criss-Cross Artist Collective. Her earliest museum exhibition was Works on Paper – Women Artists at The Brooklyn Museum in 1975.
Around 1970 Klein started developing her style. At first her diagonal lines were more like strike marks put on graph paper. She began to put color down to find a system to create patterns. Eventually Klein formalized a system on a grid, using complimentary colors and monochrome backgrounds, distributing one color at a time in every other diagonal line. She then figured out how to add complexity and ease by using factors of numbers determined by the size of the canvas to get diagonals of varying lengths distributed across the canvas. This would create patterns of diagonal lines that she then filled in with assorted colors. She did this by first drawing a one-square-inch grid on a blank canvas then placing ¼ inch wide masking tape in measurements of set lengths followed by painting a monochromatic field over the tape. Removing all the tape she would then distribute color along these hatch-marks. This predetermined system for the composition freed Klein to experiment with color, allowing her to work intuitively and playfully. As her work progressed, she began to apply her colors intuitively, creating shimmering, allover patterns that resemble needlework, woven textiles, and Pointillism. Her goal was to create a surface tension through the simultaneous use of chaos and order.
In her own words, Klein said, “The control of complex patterns is like weaving to me. It also is like construction work. I like putting as much information as possible into a field and still obtain an organized surface.” She found painting a spiritual experience – a struggle with the duality between the rational structure and intuitive flashes of insight. She identified her influences as Cubism, Minimal Art, Color Field Painting, Conceptual Art and especially Illuminated Manuscripts and Persian Miniatures. The diversity of inspiration connects Klein’s work with the Pattern and Decorative Movement.
Klein was an active member of the New York art scene. She contributed to Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics for its Lesbian Art and Artists issue in the Fall of 1977. Her bio line described her as “a native New Yorker who expresses the chaos, structure and excitement of her life in her paintings.” In 1977 she also coordinated a huge project, organizing a show of 100 artists at PS 1 called Ten Downtown / Ten Years.
Klein’s work was prominently featured in A Lesbian Show curated by Harmony Hammond in 1978 at 112 Greene Street Workshop, considered the first important lesbian art exhibition. In 1979 she had a solo exhibition Gloria Klein: Pattern Paintings at Josef Gallery, New York, NY and participated in group shows with the Criss-Cross Group in New York and Boulder. The same year she and Buffie Johnson had an exhibition together in Milwaukee. She also showed with Hansen Galleries and Gallery 128 in New York in group shows from 1974 into the 1980s.
Gloria Klein’s work is in numerous corporate collections and the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX.
Major Exhibitions
Pattern Painting, P.S.1., Long Island City, NY, 1977
Pattern on Paper, Gladstone/Villani, New York, NY, 1978
Expanding Abstraction, Blanton Museum of Art, 2020
With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985, MOCA, Los Angeles, 2020 and Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 2021