Yves Klein
In the mid-Fifties, Yves Klein (1928–1962) declared that “a new world calls for a new man”. With his idiosyncratic style and huge charisma, this bold artist would go on to pursue a brief but bountiful career, producing more than a thousand paintings over seven years in an oeuvre now considered a mainstay of the postwar modernism. Klein made his name above all with his large, monochrome canvases in his own, patented hue of blue. International Klein Blue (IKB), composed of pure pigment and binding medium, is at once rich and luminous, evocative and decorative, and was conceived by Klein as a means of evoking the immateriality and infinitude of the world. The works of this “Blue Revolution” seem to draw us into another dimension, as if hypnotized by a perfect summer sky. A pioneer of daring painting techniques, Klein was also renowned for his deployment of “living paintbrushes”, in which naked women, daubed in International Klein Blue, would make imprints of their bodies on large sheets of paper. Often, these Anthropometries were staged as elaborate performances, complete with blue cocktails or Klein’s own Monotone Symphony. This Basic Art introduction presents key Klein works to introduce an artist who was at once a showman, inventor, and pioneer of performance art. With page after page of the ever-alluring International Klein Blue, it is both an essential guide to a modern art master and a meditation on the unique effects of a single color.
Details
Cologne
2016
96 pages
9783836553131
Open stacks
Yes
No
709.203 Kle
1
- Anri Sala: Answer Me2016
- Robert Indiana: Beyond Love2013
- Wilhelm Sasnal2011
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: With Artwork by Yayoi Kusama2012
- All Variations Are Valid, Including This One2017
- Yayoi Kusama2012
- Anri Sala: Ravel Ravel Unrave2013
- Gabriela Löffel2015
- Jasper Johns2014
- Francis Bacon. Catalogue raisonné. Volume III. 1958–19712016
- Sophie Calle. Double Game2007
- Anastasia Ax2014