We are delighted to join thousands of area residents who are rejoicing in the culmination of the years-old effort to restore and preserve Franz Kline's iconic painting of the Borough of Lehighton. Unlike so many other stories of missed opportunities or lost artistic masterpieces, this is one that has a happy ending.

A short time before Kline gravitated into abstract expression and became world renowned for this genre, he was commissioned in 1946 by the American Legion Post 314 in Lehighton to paint a large mural that captured Lehighton's bygone glory and its relationship to the nearby countryside.The massive painting measures 6 feet high by 14 feet wide and was an obvious labor of love for the then 36-year-old Kline, who had lived in Lehighton as a boy and graduated from Lehighton High School. Born in Wilkes-Barre, Kline and his family moved to a home at South Ninth and Alum streets, which still stands. His stepfather's job took him from the northern anthracite coal regions to Carbon County's then largest community.The artist overcame boyhood tragedies and feelings of abandonment. His father was a saloon keeper who committed suicide in 1917, when Kline was just 7 years old. His mother remarried and sent her son to an institution for fatherless boys, which the artist referred to as an orphanage.In 1938, Kline moved to New York City. While his early works showed depictions of the coal regions of his youth, in New York he painted empty squares, skeletal buildings and the abandoned Third Avenue El, according to Chris Potash, a spokesman at the Allentown Museum of Art, where his Lehighton painting is now hanging.The talented artist died of a heart condition in 1962. He was just 52 years old.The mural was unveiled to the public last Sunday in a ceremony and talk about it and the artist at the museum. Many Lehighton area residents made contributions to the museum to help finance the restoration and preservation of the mural, which was purchased by the museum from the American Legion post.The museum hosted a special exhibition of more than 50 of Kline's works for a three-month period in 2012 and 2013. The exhibition was curated by Dr. Robert S. Mattison, the Marshall R. Metzgar Professor Art History at Lafayette College in Easton, who also was a key participant in Sunday's unveiling.According to Potash, Kline's early works show the coal region of his childhood. They depict speeding trains powered by anthracite coal, bridges and industrial scenes.Kline drew on memories of the trestles, locomotives and coal breakers that he observed firsthand when he was young. These forms symbolized the significance of the modern industrial age and greatly added to his contribution to the New York School of Painting, Potash said.After Kline moved to New York, he made occasional visits to see his mother in Lehighton. "I remember Franz coming up to see his mother - just a happy-go-lucky guy," said longtime Lehighton resident Connie McHugh, 95."We are so proud of the picture," said Carlos Teets, a trustee of the Legion post. "Like all painters when they started, he was dirt poor." About the mural, Teets said that over the years it had begun to deteriorate. We knew we had to do something about it, so we went with the Allentown Art Museum, because it is local, and more people would see it," he said.The sale price was not disclosed, but as part of the deal, the museum is providing full-size replicas of the painting for the Legion post and Lehighton Area High School.Although his death warranted significant press coverage, especially since it came so unexpectedly, Kline's fame declined, and his work was not reviewed seriously again until the art market boom of the late 1980s when a new generation of minimalists found his work to be refreshing and interesting. Today, some of Kline's works have fetched millions of dollars.Kline once said, "The final test of a painting - theirs, mine or any other - is: Does the painter's emotion come across?" We can all agree that in his mural of Lehighton there are ample doses of Kline's emotions, along with his heart and soul.We encourage area residents to visit the Allentown Art Museum to see "Lehighton" in its new home. The mural resides in the Trexler Gallery. Hours of operation are: 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays; from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. Thursdays, and from noon until 4 p.m. Sundays. The museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Admission prices are: $12 for adults, $10 for senior citizens (over 60), students and children 6 years and older. Children under 6 are admitted free.By Bruce Frassinelli |

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