Franz Kline's bold black gestural strokes on white backgrounds share the same high contrast minimalist energy as Klein's black traces, emphasizing raw mark making and the expressive weight of a single dominant color against open space.

Kelly's geometric abstraction using stark color fields, particularly his use of isolated bold yellow forms against neutral grounds, closely mirrors the visual language of Klein's four yellow pastilles set against black traces in a clean contemporary composition.

Soulages built his entire practice around the expressive and meditative possibilities of black mark making on flat surfaces, creating works that share Klein's interest in bold gestural black traces as the primary visual and compositional force.