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73-481: Yves Klein ( French: [iv klɛ̃] ; 28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962) was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany . Klein was a pioneer in the development of performance art , and is seen as an inspiration to and as a forerunner of minimal art , as well as pop art . He

146-401: A 1959 sculpture made with natural sea sponges drenched in blue pigment, fetched $ 22 million, the highest price paid for a sculpture by the artist, at Sotheby's New York . Nouveau r%C3%A9alisme Nouveau réalisme (French for "new realism") is an artistic movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in

219-484: A French version of Pop Art , the aim of the group was stated as 'Nouveau Réalisme—new ways of perceiving the real' [ Nouveau Réalisme nouvelles approches perceptives du réel ]. A large retrospective was held at Krefeld , Germany, January 1961, followed by an unsuccessful opening at Leo Castelli Gallery , New York, in which Klein failed to sell a single painting. He stayed with Rotraut at the Chelsea Hotel for

292-769: A barefoot peasant holding earth in his hands, also reproduced in the magazine Arts de France as a painting representing the movement. The new realism movement of the 50s eventually fell out of favour with the PCF and most artists associated with it soon changed their styles accordingly. The term new realism was again used in May 1960 by Pierre Restany, to describe the works of Omiros, Arman, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely and Jacques Villeglé as they exhibited their work in Milan. He had discussed this term before with Yves Klein (who died prematurely in 1962), who preferred

365-558: A book, Les Fondements du Judo , (see [1] ), studying six Katas formulated by Kanō Jigorō in the 19th century, in an attempt to establish a reputation in France by circumventing the federation. Unable to teach in France, he took a post in Madrid in May. It was whilst he was in Spain that he formulated and published his first public gesture as an artist: Yves Peintures . Yves Peintures is

438-446: A book, a musical composition—but then would take away the expected content of that form (paintings without pictures, a book without words, a musical composition without in fact composition) leaving only a shell, as it were. In this way he tried to create for the audience his "Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility". Instead of representing objects in a subjective, artistic way, Klein wanted his subjects to be represented by their imprint:

511-415: A cold and ferocious manner. Only very recently I have become a sort of gravedigger of art (oddly enough, I am using the very terms of my enemies). Some of my latest works have been coffins and tombs. During the same time I succeeded in painting with fire, using particularly powerful and searing gas flames, some of them measuring three to four meters high. I use these to bathe the surface of the painting in such

584-529: A date; one with additional information about the size of each work, and one in which the entire work is credited to 'Haguenault'. Haguenault Peintures is basically the same book, and was published at the same time, but attributed to a different, unknown, artist. Curiously, some of the plates are still mechanically signed ‘Yves’, part of a series of deliberate strategies to undermine the works’ integrity, leading some critics, such as Pierre Restany, to call Klein an early post-modernist. The main structural difference

657-571: A disdain of convention. Klein had studied judo in Japan between 1952 and 1954, and also displayed an interest in Zen Buddhism . According to Berggruen, he used ritual as a means not to attain belief, but rather as a forum through which to reach abstraction—transcending worldly vestiges temporarily, and returning to earth as a new being. Recently my work with color has led me, in spite of myself, to search little by little, with some assistance (from

730-451: A famous cover of a 3D breast, to his friend Arman . Duchamp's theories about the readymade , and his belief in the viewer making the meaning of a work of art, would be central to Yves Peintures . '[Klein] dismissed line as a ‘tourist walking across the space’. For him lines were a ‘prison grating’, whereas the fine individual particles of colour were an expression of ‘total freedom’. He attempted to free himself from all materiality through

803-466: A globe, 3D reliefs of areas of France and dowels which he hung from the ceiling as rain. He also stuck sponges to canvases and painted dinner plates. Many of these works were later manufactured as editioned multiples after his death. In Blue Obelisk , a project that he had failed to realise in 1958, but that finally happened in 1983, he appropriated the Place de la Concorde by shining blue spotlights onto

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876-474: A membership with an American society dedicated to Rosicrucianism . While attending the École Nationale des Langues Orientales Klein began practicing judo . During the years 1948 to 1952, he travelled to Italy, Great Britain, Spain, and Japan. He travelled to Japan in 1953 where he became, at the age of 25, a master at judo receiving the rank of yodan (4th dan /degree black-belt) from the Kodokan , becoming

949-458: A monochromatic gold painting, sold for $ 21 million at Christie's. FC1 (Fire Color 1) (1962), a nearly 10-foot (3.0 m)-long panel created with a blowtorch, water and two models, sold for $ 36,482,500 at Christie's on 8 May 2012. The record for the most expensive of his paintings was reached by Le Rose du Bleu (RE 22) , who sold by $ 36,753,200 at Christie's London, on 27 June 2012. In 2013, Klein's Sculpture Éponge Bleue Sans Titre, SE 168 ,

1022-537: A more rigorous study of the philosophy behind Judo , which involved long periods of meditation with his friends Arman and Claude Pascal. His second private exhibition of monochromes took place whilst Klein was in Tokyo , late 1953, around the same time as he earned a diploma from the Kōdōkan Institute , as a fourth degree Dan , achieving the highest level possible for a European. 'The philosophy of Zen , which

1095-709: A new and real awareness of their "collective singularity", meaning that they were together in spite of, or perhaps because of, their differences. But for all the diversity of their plastic language, they perceived a common basis for their work; this being a method of direct appropriation of reality, equivalent, in the terms used by Pierre Restany, to a "poetic recycling of urban, industrial and advertising reality". Artists of Nouveau Réalisme sought out to strip art of previously thought standards that art had to mean something, they could take any object beyond its preconceived notions and present it as itself, and thought it could still be considered art. Many of them also sought to break down

1168-464: A single 20-minute sustained D major chord followed by a 20-minute silence – a precedent to Klein's later monochrome paintings and to the work of minimal musicians , particularly La Monte Young 's drone music and John Cage's 4′33″ . The Symphony is rarely performed. Composer and performer Roland Dahinden said that "You can’t really do a full rehearsal of something like this" because "It’s too hard. Everyone would just die." The first performance

1241-500: A single colour - whilst working in a framing shop in London in late 1949 which he exhibited in his room privately, inviting only friends. Initially influenced by his readings of Max Heindel's The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception or Mystic Christianity , which taught that 'space equals spirit and life, that matter is inert form, [and] that sponges and water symbolize the saturation of matter with spirit, he later rejected these teachings for

1314-467: A small booklet, 24.4 cm by 19.7 cm, containing 16 sheets of unbound paper, each printed on one side only and 10 containing tipped-in sheets of coloured paper. Starting with a preface of 3 pages consisting entirely of horizontal black lines designed to parody a traditional introduction credited to ‘Pascal Claude’, (Claude Pascal, a close friend of Klein's), the introduction was actually designed by Klein himself, persuading Pascal to sign it to ‘certify

1387-681: A small but influential impact on the Parisian Art scene; using Yves Peintures to gain entry into the Parisian art world, he managed to secure an exhibition of monochromes at the Club Des Solitaires, Paris, opening on October 15, 1955. 'Yesterday night, Wednesday, we went into an abstract café… the abstractionists were there. They are easy to recognize because they give off an atmosphere of abstract painting, plus you see their paintings in their eyes. Maybe I’m delirious, but I have

1460-512: A sort of mosaic. From the reactions of the audience, [Klein] realized that...viewers thought his various, uniformly colored canvases amounted to a new kind of bright, abstract interior decoration. Shocked at this misunderstanding, Klein knew a further and decisive step in the direction of monochrome art would have to be taken...From that time onwards he would concentrate on one single, primary color alone: blue. The next exhibition, 'Proposte Monocrome, Epoca Blu' (Proposition Monochrome; Blue Epoch) at

1533-579: A way that it registered the spontaneous trace of fire. He moved on to exhibit at the Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, and traveled extensively in the Western U.S. , visiting Death Valley in the Mojave Desert . In 1962, Klein married Rotraut Uecker who gave birth to their son shortly after his death. Klein suffered a heart attack while watching the film Mondo Cane (in which he is featured) at

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1606-437: Is also a term applied to a group of Australian architects determined to create a "New Realism" in architecture, based on the understanding of past developments in the discipline of architecture and modern day explorations of new technologies in the fields of design and building technology. Yves Peintures "The booklet asserts its character straightaway in the preface: a wordless text of unbroken horizontal lines with

1679-778: Is essentially prevalent in Kōdōkan judo, being primarily concerned with an increased sensitivity for the present and an extended concept of space and time, [meant] a new form of spirituality for Klein, and [had] a direct effect upon his artistic activities.' Upon his return to Paris in February 1954, he was deeply upset to discover that his diploma would not be officially recognised by the French Federation of Judo, meaning he could not officially teach or effectively participate in French Judo activities. He responded by publishing

1752-576: Is housed in Phoenix, Arizona , where his widow Rotraut Klein-Moquay has a home. On 8 December 2017, Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers released the lead single from their thirteenth studio album Resistance is Futile , International Blue . The song was inspired by Klein, particularly the titular International Klein Blue. The Manics' bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire told the Quietus ""There

1825-682: Is known for the development and use of International Klein Blue . Klein was born in Nice , in the Alpes-Maritimes department of France. His parents, Fred Klein and Marie Raymond , were both painters. His father painted in a loose post-impressionist style, while his mother was a leading figure in Art informel , and held regular soirées with other leading practitioners of this Parisian abstract movement. Klein received no formal training in art, but his parents exposed him to different styles. His father

1898-507: Is no attempt to represent or symbolize anything.... The booklet thus offers an utterly pared down presentation. Unlike most art books, it provides no reverential prose about the artist or the art, and no embellishing descriptions meant to convey meaning or context. Instead the booklet itself is made into a work of art that shares the same spirit of nothingness exemplified by the monochrome paintings that it features." Sidra Stich Klein had painted his first monochromes - paintings consisting of

1971-526: The Cannes Film Festival on 11 May 1962. Two more heart attacks followed, the second of which killed him on 6 June 1962. Thomas McEvilley , in an essay submitted to Artforum in 1982, classified Klein as an early, though enigmatic, postmodernist artist. A sort of parody of Klein's Anthropometry performance is featured in the 1961 film Wise Guys (original title: Les Godelureaux ) directed by Claude Chabrol . The Yves Klein archive

2044-679: The Iris Clert Gallery in May 1957, became a seminal happening. To mark the opening, 1,001 blue balloons were released and blue postcards were sent out using IKB stamps that Klein had bribed the postal service to accept as legitimate. Concurrently, an exhibition of tubs of blue pigment and fire paintings was held at Galerie Collette Allendy. For his next exhibition at the Iris Clert Gallery (April 1958), Klein chose to show nothing whatsoever, called La spécialisation de la sensibilité à l'état matière première en sensibilité picturale stabilisée, Le Vide ( The Specialization of Sensibility in

2117-481: The Ultra-Lettrists , Francois Dufrêne , Raymond Hains , Jacques de la Villeglé ; in 1961 these were joined by César , Mimmo Rotella , then Niki de Saint Phalle and Gérard Deschamps . The artist Christo showed with the group. It was dissolved in 1970. Contemporary with American pop art , and often conceived as its transposition in France, new realism was, along with Fluxus and other groups, one of

2190-454: The "authenticity of the pure idea." This colour, reminiscent of the lapis lazuli used to paint the Madonna's robes in medieval paintings, was to become known as International Klein Blue (IKB). The paintings were attached to poles placed 20 cm (8 in) away from the walls to increase their spatial ambiguities. All 11 of the canvases were priced differently. The buyers would go through

2263-645: The Apollinaire gallery in Milan . Pierre Restany wrote the original manifesto for the group, titled the "Constitutive Declaration of New Realism," in April 1960, proclaiming, "Nouveau Réalisme—new ways of perceiving the real." This joint declaration was signed on 27 October 1960, in Yves Klein's workshop, by nine people: Yves Klein , Arman , Martial Raysse , Pierre Restany , Daniel Spoerri , Jean Tinguely and

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2336-516: The Gallery Apollinaire, Milan, (January 1957), featured 11 identical blue canvases, using ultramarine pigment suspended in a synthetic resin 'Rhodopas', described by Klein as "The Medium". Discovered with the help of Edouard Adam, a Parisian paint dealer, the optical effect retained the brilliance of the pigment which, when suspended in linseed oil, tended to become dull. Klein later deposited a Soleau envelope for this recipe to maintain

2409-608: The IKB paintings being uniformly coloured, Klein experimented with various methods of applying the paint; firstly different rollers and then later sponges, created a series of varied surfaces. This experimentalism would lead to a number of works Klein made using naked female models covered in blue paint and dragged across or laid upon canvases to make the image, using the models as "living brushes". This type of work he called Anthropometry . Other paintings in this method of production include "recordings" of rain that Klein made by driving around in

2482-830: The Muratore Gallery and the Abbaye de Roseland; International Exhibition of the New Realists , a survey of contemporary American pop art and the Nouveau Réalisme movement at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York at the end of 1962; and at the Biennale of San Marino in 1963 (which would be the last collective show by the group). The movement had difficulty maintaining a cohesive program after

2555-698: The Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, The Void ): he removed everything in the gallery space except a large cabinet, painted every surface white, and then staged an elaborate entrance procedure for the opening night: the gallery's window was painted blue, and a blue curtain was hung in the entrance lobby, accompanied by republican guards and blue cocktails. Thanks to an enormous publicity drive, 3,000 people queued up, waiting to be let into an empty room. The art historian Olivier Berggruen situates Klein "as one who strove for total liberation," forming connections between perverse ritual and

2628-518: The Salon d'Automne in 1948. Painters like Boris Taslitzky , Jean Milhau, Jean Vénitien and Mireille Miailhe were also at its origin in France while Renato Guttuso , the "Italian Fougeron", was considered to be "at the origin of the new Italian realism", with his works on Sicilian peasants such as The Occupation of Waste Land in Sicily (1949) and Gabriele Mucchi with his painting La Terre representing

2701-468: The Void ), originally published in his 1960 artist's book Dimanche , which apparently shows him jumping off a wall, arms outstretched, towards the pavement. Klein used the photograph as evidence of his ability to undertake unaided lunar travel. In fact, "Saut dans le vide", published as part of a broadside on the part of Klein (the "artist of space") denouncing NASA's own lunar expeditions as hubris and folly,

2774-606: The central obelisk. The art critic Pierre Restany , who spoke of how his first meeting with Klein had been fundamental to them both, went on to found the Nouveau Réalisme group with Klein in Klein's studio/apartment on 27 October 1960. Founding members were Arman , Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains , Yves Klein, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri , Jean Tinguely , and Jacques Villeglé , with Niki de Saint Phalle , Christo and Gérard Deschamps joining later. Normally seen as

2847-463: The city in exchange for gold. He wanted his buyers to experience The Void by selling them empty space. In his view this experience could only be paid for in the purest material: gold. In exchange, he gave a certificate of ownership to the buyer. As the second part of the piece, performed on the Seine with an art critic in attendance, if the buyer agreed to set fire to the certificate, Klein would throw half

2920-428: The creation of these paintings was turned into a kind of performance art —an event in 1960, for example, had an audience dressed in formal evening wear watching the models go about their task while an instrumental ensemble played Klein's 1949 The Monotone Symphony . In the performance piece, Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle ( Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility ) 1959–1962, he offered empty spaces in

2993-460: The death of Yves Klein in June, 1962 and when Omiros abandoned it and decided to go in his own path experimenting with perspective and space. The members of the nouveaux réalistes group tended to see the world as an image from which they could take parts and incorporate them into their works—as they sought to bring life and art closer together. They declared that they had come together on the basis of

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3066-480: The duration of the exhibition; and, while there, he wrote the "Chelsea Hotel Manifesto", a proclamation of the "multiplicity of new possibilities." In part, the manifesto declared: At present, I am particularly excited by "bad taste." I have the deep feeling that there exists in the very essence of bad taste a power capable of creating those things situated far beyond what is traditionally termed "The Work of Art." I wish to play with human feeling, with its "morbidity" in

3139-401: The expression "today's realism" ( réalisme d'aujourd'hui ) and criticized the term "New". After the first "Manifesto of New Realism", a second manifesto, titled "40° above Dada" ( 40° au-dessus de Dada ) was written between 17 May and 10 June 1961. César , Mimmo Rotella , Niki de Saint-Phalle (then practicing "shooting paintings") Omiros with his "free space" and Gérard Deschamps then joined

3212-526: The first European to rise to that rank. Later that year, he became the technical director of the Spanish judo team. In 1954 Klein wrote a book on judo called Les Fondements du judo . The same year, he settled permanently in Paris and began in earnest to establish himself in the art world. Between 1947 and 1948, Klein conceived his Monotone Symphony (1949, formally Monotone Silence Symphony ) that consisted of

3285-462: The gallery, observing each canvas and purchase the one that was deemed best in their own eyes specifically. Klein's idea was that each buyer would see something unique in the canvas that they bought that other buyers may not have seen. So while each painting visually looked the same, the impact each had on the buyer was completely unique. The show was a critical and commercial success, traveling to Paris, Düsseldorf and London. The Parisian exhibition, at

3358-530: The glamorization of artists producing their craft in private, and due to this, often art pieces were produced in public. Thus the nouveaux réalistes advocated a return to "reality" in opposition to the lyricism of abstract painting . They also wanted to avoid what they saw as the traps of figurative art, which was seen as either petty-bourgeois or as Stalinist socialist realism . Hence the Nouveau Réalistes used exterior objects to give an account of

3431-431: The gold into the river, in order to restore the "natural order" that he had unbalanced by selling the empty space (that was now not "empty" anymore). He used the other half of the gold to create a series of gold-leafed works, which, along with a series of pink monochromes, began to augment his blue monochromes toward the end of his life. Klein is also well known for a composite photograph , Saut dans le vide ( Leap into

3504-411: The group, including Isidore Isou , and by Dufrêne, Gil J. Wolman & Guy Debord , and had become a close friend of Dufrêne in particular. The lettrists advocated challenging textual authority, and would serve as a direct reference point for the introduction. He was also familiar with the work of Marcel Duchamp , having given a copy of the 1947 artist's book Le Surrealisme , designed by Duchamp with

3577-583: The image of their absence. He tried to make his audience experience a state where an idea could simultaneously be "felt" as well as "understood". As well as painting flat canvases, Klein produced a series of works throughout his career that blurred the edges between painting and sculpture. He appropriated plaster casts of famous sculptures, such as the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo , by painting them International Klein Blue; he painted

3650-410: The manifestations of doubling, duplication and duplicity that lay at the core of the project.” Sidra Stich Klein was in contact at this time with key advocates of Lettrism , a group of French avant garde artists who were challenging the assumed authority of texts by creating ‘an experiential language that was to be the basis of (the) new culture.’ By 1952, he had seen various works by key members of

3723-565: The movement, followed by Christo in 1963. Klein, however, started to distance himself from the group around 1961, disliking Restany's insistence on a Dadaist heritage. The first exposition of the nouveaux réalistes took place in November 1960 at the Paris " Festival d'avant-garde ". This exposition was followed by others: in May 1961 at the Gallery J. in Paris; Premier Festival du Nouveau Réalisme in Nice from July til September 1961 at

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3796-472: The numerous tendencies of the avant-garde in the 1960s. The group initially chose Nice , on the French Riviera , as its home base since Klein and Arman both originated there; new realism is thus often retrospectively considered by historians to be an early representative of the École de Nice movement. The painter Jean Milhau coined the term “new realism” in the journal Arts de France , which

3869-514: The observer, from the translator), for the realization of matter, and I have decided to end the battle. My paintings are now invisible and I would like to show them in a clear and positive manner, in my next Parisian exhibition at Iris Clert's. Later in the year, he was invited to decorate the Gelsenkirchen Opera House , Germany, with a series of vast blue murals, the largest of which were 20 metres by 7 metres. The Opera House

3942-564: The podcast This is Love released an episode, "Blue," about Klein and his work. A 2021 short novel, Blue Postcards by Douglas Bruton, is built around the life and art of Yves Klein. Alongside works by Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning , Klein's painting RE 46 (1960) was among the top-five sellers at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art sale in May 2006. His monochromatic blue sponge painting sold for $ 4,720,000. Previously, his painting RE I (1958) had sold for $ 6,716,000 at Christie's New York in November 2000. In 2008, MG 9 (1962),

4015-478: The possibility of being immersed in the immeasurable existence of colour’ Ulrike Lehmann The book was published by Fernando Franco de Sarabia's engraving workshop in Jaen near Madrid, in a numbered edition of 150; despite this, there are believed to only be around 10 copies in existence. Yves Peintures has since been re-published by Editions Dilecta, Paris in 2006 in an edition of 400. The book seems to have had

4088-455: The previous years. Yves Peintures anticipated his first two shows of oil paintings, at the Club des Solitaires, Paris, October 1955 and Yves: Proposition monochromes at Gallery Colette Allendy, February 1956. Public responses to these shows, which displayed orange, yellow, red, pink and blue monochromes, deeply disappointed Klein, as people went from painting to painting, linking them together as

4161-436: The production’. 10 vivid monochromatic plates follow, mechanically signed ‘Yves’, each given unspecified numerical dimensions and assigned a large city. If, as is usual in exhibition catalogues, the dimensions refer to centimetres, the plates would represent medium-sized easel paintings; if metres, large frescoes ; if millimetres, then the plates are life size, leading to the conclusion that, rather than illustrations, they are

4234-428: The rain at 70 miles per hour with a canvas tied to the roof of his car, and canvases with patterns of soot created by scorching the canvas with gas burners. Klein and Arman were continually involved with each other creatively, both as Nouveaux Réalistes and as friends. Both from Nice, the two worked together for many years and Arman even named his son, Yves Arman , after Yves Klein, who was his godfather. Sometimes

4307-498: The reality of their time. They were the inventor of the décollage technique (the opposite of collages), in particular through the use of lacerated posters—a technique mastered by François Dufrene, Jacques Villeglé, Mimmo Rotella and Raymond Hains. Often these artists worked collaboratively and it was their intention to present their artworks in the city of Paris anonymously. Nouveau réalistes made extensive use of collage and assemblage , using real objects incorporated directly into

4380-437: The same two paragraph indentations on each page.... a homogenous continuum with no real beginning, middle, or end, and no content - at least insofar as there are no descriptions, analyses, or personalized utterances. The colour plates are similarly presented as anonymous entities, each a flat spatial field of an uninflected hue: turquoise, brown, purple, green, pink, gray, yellow, ultramarine, mint, orange, or red. Here, too, there

4453-429: The sound half of the symphony, freezing during the silence". Although Klein had painted monochromes as early as 1949, and held the first private exhibition of this work in 1950, his first public showing was the publication of the artist's book Yves Peintures in November 1954. Parodying a traditional catalogue raisonné , the book featured a series of intense monochromes linked to various cities he had lived in during

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4526-438: The totality of colour. In gold, red and especially dark, deep ultramarine blue he found colours that corresponded adequately to his visions of the immaterial and the infinite. He wanted to induce independent sensations, feelings and reactions in viewers without giving them a depicted object or an abstract sign as a starting-point, just by means of the state and effect of the colour. He saw monochrome as an ‘open window to freedom, as

4599-466: The work and acknowledging a debt to the readymades of Marcel Duchamp . But the New Realism movement has often been compared to the pop art movement in New York for their use and critique of mass-produced commercial objects ( Villeglé 's ripped cinema posters, Arman 's collections of detritus and trash), although Nouveau Réalisme maintained closer ties with Dada than with pop art. "The new realists"

4672-413: The work itself. Klein would later create work in all three categories. The cities are all places Klein had lived and worked in the preceding 4 years, implying either that the idea for each work had come to him in the relevant city, or that the work was an abstract representation of the city's atmosphere. There are three versions of the book; one in which the plates have the name Yves next to the cities with

4745-456: The world between themselves; Arman chose the earth, Pascal, words, while Klein chose the ethereal space surrounding the planet, which he then proceeded to sign: With this famous symbolic gesture of signing the sky, Klein had foreseen, as in a reverie, the thrust of his art from that time onwards—a quest to reach the far side of the infinite. In early 1948, Klein was exposed to Max Heindel 's 1909 text The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception and pursued

4818-423: Was a figurative style painter, while his mother had an interest in abstract expressionism. From 1942 to 1946, Klein studied at the École Nationale de la Marine Marchande and the École Nationale des Langues Orientales. At this time, he became friends with Arman (Armand Fernandez) and Claude Pascal and started to paint. At the age of nineteen, Klein and his friends lay on a beach in the south of France, and divided

4891-485: Was a joy to 'International Blue' that we weren't sure we could convey any more, the feeling of being in love with something like Yves Klein, to pass on the joy of that colour and that vividness – we weren't sure if we still had it in us. It sounds quite young." In 2017, the MoMA - and WNYC -produced contemporary art podcast A Piece of Work hosted by Abbi Jacobson had an episode focused on Klein's blue monochromes. In 2018,

4964-555: Was a photomontage in which the large tarpaulin, held by artist friends, Klein leaped onto was removed from the final image. Klein's work revolved around a Zen -influenced concept he came to describe as "le Vide" (the Void). Klein's Void is a nirvana-like state that is void of worldly influences; a neutral zone where one is inspired to pay attention to one's own sensibilities, and to "reality" as opposed to "representation". Klein presented his work in forms that were recognized as art—paintings,

5037-497: Was close to the French Communist Party , and defined this young movement in 1948: “A current is emerging which, without denying the achievements of modern culture and technology, denies the primacy of formal research, advocates a return to objective reality and to the subject, and emphasizes the social content of all reality". André Fougeron really launched the movement with Les Parisiennes au Marché , exhibited at

5110-490: Was in a Paris art gallery in 1960, with only ten performing musicians. Singer Sahra Motalebi described it as "The reality is that it’s like a kind of bizarre primordial universe chorus. It’s not like a note you’ve ever heard." Klein himself compared the sound of his symphony to screams. For the first performance in Paris, Klein invited three naked women, whom he called "living brushes", who "covered themselves in his signature deep blue paint and pressed their bodies on paper during

5183-541: Was inaugurated in December 1959. Klein celebrated the commission by travelling to Cascia , Italy, to place an ex-voto offering at the Saint Rita Monastery . "May all that emerges from me be beautiful," he prayed. The offering took the form of a small transparent plastic box containing three compartments; one filled with IKB pigment, one filled with pink pigment, and one with gold leaf inside. The container

5256-490: Was only rediscovered in 1980. Klein's last two exhibitions at Iris Clert's were Vitesse Pure et Stabilité Monochrome ( Sheer Speed and Monochrome Stability ), November 1958, a collaboration with Jean Tinguely , of kinetic sculptures, and Bas-Reliefs dans une Forêt d'Éponges ( Bas-Reliefs in a Sponge Forest ), June 1959, a collection of sponges that Klein had used to paint IKB canvases, mounted on steel rods and set in rocks that he'd found in his parents' garden. Despite

5329-483: Was the accrediting of ownership in the captions (Collection Particuliere, Collection Orickson, Collection Raymond Hains, etc.). This implies the (fictional) artist was a painter of some stature, with work collected in major collections. According to Raymond Hains , a close friend of Klein's at the time, Klein had named his pseudonym after a brand of gingerbread. “ The fact that there were two different monochrome artists featured in two nearly identical booklets augmented

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