Background
Yves Klein was born on April 28, 1928 in Nice, France. He was the son of Fred Klein and Marie Raymond, both painters.
Yves Klein during the work on the Gelsenkirchen Opera, 1959
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/2916275118/?tag=2022091-20
Yves Klein was born on April 28, 1928 in Nice, France. He was the son of Fred Klein and Marie Raymond, both painters.
During the period from 1942 to 1946, Klein studied at the École Nationale de la Marine Marchande and the École Nationale des Langues Orientales (present-day National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations). At that time, he also began practicing judo.
Klein's major artistic breakthrough occurred in 1947 while lying on a beach with his friends Pascal and Arman. In the apocryphal account, the three friends divided the universe between themselves: Arman claimed the materiality of the earth, Pascal appropriated language and words, and Klein possessed "the void" or the planet empty of all matter. Klein embarked on a "realistic-imaginative" daydream into the depths of the universe, where he claimed to have inscribed his name in the sky. The symbolic gesture was a flashpoint in Klein's artistic pursuit to grapple with what he defined as the infinite.
Since 1948 to 1952, Yves Klein traveled to Italy, Great Britain, Spain and Japan. In Japan, at the age of 25, he became a master at judo receiving the rank of yodan from the Kodokan, which at that time was a remarkable achievement for a westerner. Klein later wrote a book on judo called "Les Fondements du judo".
The enlightening realization of the void in the sky led Klein to experiment in painting, performance, and music. In 1949, he created The Monotone-Silence Symphony, a piece containing a single chord sustained for twenty minutes followed by twenty minutes of meditative silence. The composition symbolized the sound pitch emitted from the monochrome blue sky (or "the void"), emphasizing universal harmony.
Some time later, Yves traveled to Japan, where he had a second private exhibition of monochromatic paintings and proclaimed The Manifesto of the Monochrome, in which he declared monochrome to be an "open window to freedom, as the possibility of being immersed in the immeasurable existence of color". Klein was determined to evoke emotions and sensations independent of line, rendered objects or abstracted symbols, believing the monochromatic surface released the painting from materiality through the totality of pure pigment.
In 1954, Klein settled permanently in Paris and began to establish himself in the art world. Two years later, he held a controversial exhibition at the Galerie Colette Allendy entitled "Yves: Propositions Monochromes". Twenty monochromatic paintings were displayed, rendered in tones of blue, red, yellow, and orange. Klein received a disappointing reaction from the public, who viewed the exhibition as a new form of interior abstraction rather than an infinite journey into the immateriality of the surface.
The same year, in 1956, with the assistance of a chemical technician, Klein succeeded in suspending his favorite ultramarine pigment in petroleum extracts, which allowed the pigment to maintain its brilliance and something of its powdery texture without dulling. He named the substance International Klein Blue (IKB). This marked the beginning of Klein's Blue Period, in which he produced several monochromatic paintings in the signature color, titling each International Klein Blue, combined with a serial number.
In 1957, Klein exhibited 11 evenly spaced, vibrant IKB paintings at the Gallery Apollinaire in Milan. The paintings were displayed on poles, identical in size and structure, but each bearing a different price, something that for Klein suggested the irrelevance of the material objects themselves and the importance instead of the viewer's response.
Yves took the concept of the immaterial a step further, when he removed everything with the exception of an oversized cabinet from the Iris Clert Gallery in 1958. He believed that in emptying the gallery "the invisible would become effective through the perceptible". He titled the piece Le Vide (The Void), and created an intricate entrance ritual for the opening night.
In 1960, Klein renounced personal attachment to the picture plane by applying IKB with paint rollers and female models in a series dubbed the Anthropométries, the first of which was exhibited as a performance piece at the Galerie Internationale d'Art Contemporain in Paris. Nude female models slathered themselves in IKB and pressed their bodies against the gallery walls to create imprints. During this time, Klein became increasingly fascinated with natural elements and would incorporate fire, water, sea sponges and gravel into his canvases and sculptures. This resulted in a series of fire paintings, monochromatic relief paintings and IKB sculptures, that expressed cosmological ideas of infinite space.
Yves Klein was best known for his trademark ultramarine pigment, which he patented as International Klein Blue in 1961. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme, founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany.
His most famous works are IKB 191 (1962) and Monotone Symphony (1949).
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 was sold for $4,720,000. Previously, the painting RE I (1958) was sold for $6,716,000 at Christie's New York in November 2000.
Yves's most expensive work FC1 (Fire Color 1) was sold for $36.4 million at Christie's in 2012.
Today Klein's works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the National Gallery in Washington, D. C. and others.
Untitled Red Monochrome
Expression of the Universe of the Color Lead Orange
Anthropometry
Silence Is Golden
Untitled Green Monochrome
People begin to fly
Fire Painting
Landscape
Black Monochrome
Untitled Drawing
Moon II
Untitled Drawing
Untitled Drawing
Wind of Voyage
Relief sponge
RE 11
Globe blue
California
Ex-voto dedicated to Saint Rita of Cascia
Untitled Yellow Monochrome
The Wave
Monochrome blue, gold, pink, silver, black
Gold Leaf on Panel
Untitled anthropometry
Untitled Cosmogony
Untitled Blue Monochrome
Untitled Orange Monochrome
Untitled Pink Monochrome
Untitled Anthropometry (ANT, 123)
Untitled Drawing
Resonance
Anthropometries of the Blue Period
Untitled Blue Monochrome
Untitled Pink Monochrome
Untitled Fire Painting
Blue
Fire Painting F31
Christ Carrying the Cross
Fire Painting F6
Monochrome Red Untitled
Great blue cannibalism, Tribute to Tennessee Williams
Untitled Red Monochrome
A Minute's Blue Fire Painting
Monochrome red (theater)
Horse
Untitled Monogold
Untitled Blue Monochrome
Untitled Blue Monochrome
Assemblage of Used Paint Rollers
Monochrome vert
Untitled White Monochrome
Fire Painting F25
Monochrome Pink Untitled
Untitled Color Fire Painting
Untitled Monogold
A Rain of "Pleasure"
Anthropometry of the blue period
Monochrome yellow, red and green (theater)
Ho! Ho!
Untitled White Monochrome
Fire Painting F36
Untitled Monogold
Fire Painting
Untitled Color Fire Painting
Untitled Green Monochrome
Untitled Color Fire Painting
Untitled Yellow & Pink Monochrome
Untitled Color Fire Painting
Blue Monochrome Pierced by Fire
Quotations: "Blue…is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colors are not. All colors arouse specific ideas, while blue suggests at most the sea and the sky; and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract."
Yves Klein married Rotraut Uecker on January 21, 1962. The couple had a son — Yves Klein.
