The Heroic Painting That Set Franz Kline's Auction Record

Franz Kline, Untitled (1957) sold for $40.4m at Christie's in New Yorkon November 14, 2012.

The oil on canvas work, which had a guarantee, had been traded three times before. Previous owners include the music mogul David Geffen.

Painted in 1957, Klein's nearly ten-foot wide, black-and-white abstract is among the most heroic of the dynamic canvases he painted between 1950 and his premature death in 1962 aged 51.

He worked fast when creating his action paintings but they were often based on careful preparation. He would first create oil sketches made on paper sheets torn from the telephone book to perfect his apparently spontaneous compositions.

Kline often worked all through the night. He once told a visitor to his high-windowed Manhattan studio: "Yes, it's a nice view and there's plenty of light. But you know I don't really need either, not for my work."

The sale beat Kline's previous auction record by $31.08m, a 325% rise. The previous record was set by Shenandoah (1956), which sold for $9.32m at Sotheby's on November 13, 2012.

A Brief History of Franz Kline at Auction