Collector Walls: The Mystery of the Upside-Down Franz Kline Masterpiece

D uring one of my long nights scrolling through social media, I stumbled across a photograph of an Italian collector’s home, featuring what appeared to be an incredible Franz Kline painting. There was no information relating to it, and the image itself was blurry and hard to make out. At first, I couldn’t understand why the painting in the photograph seemed so familiar. And then it clicked. I had been standing in front of the very same Kline, “Untitled” from 1957, just a few months prior, at the Kunsthaus Zürich in Switzerland. However, in the photograph, the painting was hanging upside down. Had the Kunsthaus Zürich hung it incorrectly? This was also the very same Kline that made headlines in 2012 after selling for a record-breaking $40.4 million.

Curious to uncover the origin of the anonymous photograph, which appeared to be from the 1960s based on the interior design choices, I started digging online to see what I could find. My search was soon halted when I discovered no record of anyone owning the painting before the 1980s. For such an important work within the canon of abstract expressionism, why were there so many unsolved questions relating to it? How did the painting end up in Italy? Why was it hung upside down? Why was there a nearly 30-year gap in the provenance? What made it the most expensive Kline ever sold publicly?

The only real piece of information regarding the early whereabouts of the painting was that it had been included in an exhibition in Rome in 1963. The exhibition was held at Galleria La Tartaruga, a now defunct establishment that, during the ’50s and ’60s, was the first to host solo exhibitions of Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly in Europe. However, the history of the gallery and any living contacts related to it were nowhere to be found. The Italian State Archive had acquired and locked away all gallery records.

On a whim, I called an old friend in Italy who is well acquainted with the cultural circles in Rome. He suggested that Marion Franchetti, a gallerist descending from a noble family of collectors, might know where to look. By some miracle, when I spoke with Franchetti, she instantly recognized the room: “This is my uncle’s house!” I couldn’t quite believe it. That weekend, I took a flight to Rome to meet her for lunch, during which she pulled out a dusty box of vintage magazines and books kept by her mother. Soon, the mysteries surrounding the origin of the painting began to unravel.

Her uncle was Mario Franchetti, the brother of Giorgio Franchetti, the legendary Italian collector, and Tatiana Franchetti, the wife of artist Cy Twombly. The Franchettis are among the most prominent families in Italy; their family tree includes Twomblys, Fondas and Rothschilds. Mario himself was a partner at Galleria La Tartaruga. In 1963, a year after Kline died unexpectedly of a heart attack at 51, the gallery organized a solo exhibition of paintings by the artist. The centerpiece was “Untitled,” 1957.

After the show, Mario Franchetti took ownership of the Kline, soon moving it to his country home, which was situated in the Appio-Pignatelli suburb on the outskirts of Rome. What remains unclear today is why Franchetti chose to hang the painting upside down. It’s not unheard of for collectors to hang works in orientations that differ from the artist’s original intent, particularly with abstract expressionist pieces. The Schlumbergers famously hung their Rothko upside down in the entryway of their Paris home out of pure preference. While he worked, Kline constantly rotated his canvases, altering their final orientation. When I showed the photograph of Mario Franchetti’s living room to art dealer Brett Gorvy, of Lévy Gorvy Dayan, he said, “It feels like a different painting upside down.” (Gorvy oversaw the 2012 Christie’s auction of the Kline painting.)

Franchetti lived with “Untitled,” 1957, until his death in 1976, after which much of his art collection was sold or donated, including the Kline, which found its way to the U.S. It was swiftly acquired by Robert Mnuchin, a fascinating figure in the New York scene who has led an almost double life. When he acquired the Kline, Mnuchin was a Wall Street veteran with a keen eye for collecting. Later, he would undertake a complete career pivot, running his own gallery out of his Upper East Side townhouse, fast becoming one of the leading dealers in the country. As a collector-turned-dealer, Mnuchin adopted the approach that almost everything on the walls of his home was for sale for the right price.

I was curious to see which way Mnuchin had hung the Kline. Through a magazine editor in Paris, I obtained the original Ektachrome negatives from a shoot at Mnuchin’s home in the late 1980s. The negatives had been hidden in a storage facility outside the city, untouched for almost 40 years. The photographs revealed the Kline hanging right-side up. Other masterpieces by Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Cy Twombly hung on the surrounding walls, and light streamed through the arched windows.

Soon after forming his first art dealership, C&M Arts, in 1992 and leaving his finance career behind, Mnuchin placed the Kline with one of his top collectors. The new owner dutifully held on to the work until 2012 when it was announced that it would be coming to auction.

I learned a fascinating detail about Kline’s market as I researched this piece, which ties into the reason this painting sold for such an immense sum. At the beginning of his career, Kline used inexpensive, low-viscosity house paints that, while effective for his expressive process, were prone to deterioration over time. It wasn’t until the mid-to-late 1950s, with the support and encouragement of his new dealer, Sidney Janis, that Kline could afford higher-quality paints. It is even rumored that the Guggenheim in New York once tried to organize a retrospective of his work, but they couldn’t convince collectors of the early paintings to loan them out due to fears that they might be ruined if moved. Thus, when the 1957 masterpiece came to auction, it was positioned perfectly to set a new record for the artist. It ultimately sold for $40.4 million, twice its low estimate, to an anonymous collector in Switzerland.

Currently, the Kline hangs right-side up in the Kunsthaus Zürich in Switzerland, bringing the painting’s journey almost full circle, not far north of the gallery in Rome where it was
first shown.