Yves Klein – Sell & Buy Works, prices, biography

The French artist is one of the inventors of monochrome painting. The self-taught son of a painter and devout Catholic who intensively studied the esoteric Rosicrucian doctrine, judo and meditation, was not concerned with formal aspects and colour values in his monochrome pictures, but in conveying a spiritual-sublime experience. For this, he applied the paint – he patented his characteristic ultramarine blue (International Klein Blue IKB) in 1960 – not with the brush, which he dismissed as too ‘psychological’, but as much as possible indirectly, without touching the canvas. The uniformly powdery surface was intended to make the immaterial colour-energy tangible, to sensitise the viewer and convey them a meditative ‘infinite’ spatial experience.

Both of Yves Klein’s parents were also artists

Klein was born in Paris in 1928 and grew up partly there and partly in Nice with his parents, the artists Marie Raymond and Fred Klein, and studied at the École Nationale des Langues Orientales in Paris from 1944 to 1946. Impressed by the blues used in the frescoes of the basilica in Assisi which he visited on a trip to Italy, he began to create his monochrome pictures, exhibiting his works initially in his own home. From 1955, he increasingly utilised his own ‘home-made’ ultramarine in his paintings, which, as mentioned above, he had patented in 1960. 

Important encounter between Yves Klein and an art critic

In 1955, Yves Klein met the art critic Pierre Restany at the first public exhibition of his monochrome work. He understood Klein’s approach immediately and would become a close confidant and supporter. The exhibition Yves – Propositions monochrome was opened in Paris in 1956 before being shown Milan, Düsseldorf and London.
Following the increasing dematerialisation of his art, he released invitations for the Le vide exhibition at the Paris gallery Iris Clert in 1958. The translation of The Emptiness was 100% correct: there were only brightly lit, empty walls. In the Anthropometries in 1958, Klein instructed female models to apply the paint to the canvases with their bodies (performances such as ‘Le vide’ of that year). He also coloured objects such as stones or wood, and later integrated sponges on the canvas (Schwammrelief, e.g. in the Gelsenkirchen Theatre in 1959) and also included the elements in his works with the fire pictures from 1961 and Cosmogonien (traces of wind, rain, etc. from 1960). In 1960, he founded the artists’ group Nouveau Réalisme in his Paris apartment. 

Sad fate for the French artist Yves Klein

Alongside the creation of his world-famous, blue works, Klein held performances, wrote papers, and made films. His work is represented in the most prestigious collections and exhibitions worldwide. Yves Klein died of a heart attack in 1962 – four months after his marriage to Rotraut Uecker, and two months before the birth of their child Yves Armand Klein.

© Kunsthaus Lempertz