by Mrs. drs. W. Gertsen - ‘I still have vivid memories of the opening of Frits Klein’s exhibition in the Waaggebouw in Nijmegen back in August 1968 – all the people who had climbed the steps of the medieval building on that warm summer’s evening to attend the opening in that crowded room, where hardly a breath of coolness penetrated. Nijmegen had never seen such a flood of people. What was even more impressive was that the interest was maintained throughout the following weeks almost up until the last day. And all this when the name Frits Klein was still completely unknown in the Nijmegen area.’ The words of writer Henk van Gelre during his speech on the occasion of the Frits Klein exhibition in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, 1978. Klein exhibited regularly in the Netherlands until his last retrospective to mark his ninetieth birthday in 1988.


Paris
From the 1920s onwards, Frits Klein worked in the impressionistic tradition of the late nineteenth century. Even in those days, when cubism reigned supreme and museum directors were advising artists to create abstract works, Klein remained faithful to his own subjects and painting techniques. In Paris, he became a student of André Lhote (1885-1962) and Conrad Kickert (1882-1965) and was an admirer of Monet, the intimist painters Bonnard and Vuillard, and William Turner.

With Piet Mondriaan as his neighbour in the legendary house on the Rue du Départ, Klein nevertheless developed along his own lines. In 1919, when he arrived in Paris, the city was marvelling at the cubists, but Klein meanwhile took his inspiration from Claude Monet and Pierre Bonnard. ‘I have colour combinations in my head, and then I look for a tableau in which to use them,’ he explained in an interview. He took colour as his starting point, and the images came after – sometimes he preferred an orange-purple scheme, sometimes green-yellow, and other times purple-blue.

After the Second World War, there was a deluge of abstract painting. Anyone who was not painting abstract works could not hope to be taken seriously. Klein was even told by Willem Sandberg, the then director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, that as soon as he began to produce abstract work, Klein would be ‘his man’. But Klein stuck to his own course and much of his work found its way into private hands in France, Japan and the Netherlands.


Kickert admired Klein’s strength of will: ‘Your colours are delightfully unreal. You see our Jardin du Luxembourg in rich reds and emerald greens, you see your skies full of rich violet, turquoise and ruby tones. Your mother-of-pearl seas, shrouded in atmosphere, shimmer under a sensual dome of cloudless skies before moist, pink and yellow beaches.’ The words of Conrad Kickert in an open letter published in Het Vaderland on May 5th 1956.  Kickert was not the only art critic who admired Klein; his work was also appreciated by, among others, Jan Engelsman, Hans Redeker and Ed Wingen. French art critics wrote about Klein, too, including R.V. Gindertael, Raymond Cogniat and Jean Chabanon. The French often compared him to Odilon Redon. ‘Klein works like Odilon Redon: he begins with a dream of colours, from which the theme slowly takes form. In spite of all that, he does return to reality, albeit a dream-like reality’ said one French reviewer.

Klein's first exhibition was in 1931 in the Galerie Schotte, Rue St. Georges, Paris. Klein also exhibited in London in 1946: this was at the gallery Le Centre d'Art Anglo-Francais which belonged to his friend, the artist Alfred Rozelaar Green. In Tokyo his son, Yves, showed Klein's work in 1952.