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Lot Essay
Triumphantly announcing the arrival of Yves Klein’s iconic blue paintings, the artist’s Untitled blue monochrome, (IKB 272), a panel of vivid ultramarine blue exuding extra-dimensional depth, is one of the eleven original blue monochromes exhibited at Galleria Apollinaire’s legendary 1957 show Yves Klein: Proposte monochrome, Epoca Blu. This celebrated exhibition saw the first unveiling of International Klein Blue (IKB), Klein’s groundbreaking chromatic innovation which fundamentally altered the course of art history. Untitled blue monochrome, (IKB 272) potently advances Klein’s conception of color as the ultimate artistic achievement, allowing the viewer to “bathe in cosmic sensibility,” liberated from the oppressive nature of line and form (quoted in P. Karmel, “Yves Klein: Supernova,” in Yves Klein: A Career Survey, exh. cat., L&M Arts, New York, 2005, p. 11). Klein’s singular achievement in Untitled blue monochrome, (IKB 272) is announced by the noted author Dino Buzzati, who proclaimed that, “in terms of figurative renunciation, formal purity or abstractionism, we will not be able to go further for centuries” (“Blu Blu Blu: Un fenomeno alla Galleria Apollinaire,” Corriere d’Informazione, 9-10 January 1957).
Klein conceived his solo show entirely of blue works after realizing that audiences were misinterpreting his previous exhibitions of different colored monochromes as purely decorative. The artist considered his unique blue color to have a quality closest to pure space, associating it with immateriality—evoking a spiritual silence, wherein one might find their own inner meaning. In the present work, Klein used a paint roller to apply his blue pigment over his gauze-covered wooden panel treated with casein, creating a decadent, velvety texture exhibiting an almost unearthly appearance of depth. This distinctive textured surface is exemplary of his earliest Monochromes and crucial to the work’s conceptual apparatus. The delicate ridges that occur organically across the surface ensures the picture functions as a field generating an alternative vision, preventing the viewer from seeing the work as an individualized rectangular shape and instead allowing the support to disappear, revealing the immaterial sublime.
With the present work, Klein consolidates his position at the forefront of the European avant-garde, propelling the possibilities of paint past figuration toward what he with the art critic Pierre Restany termed Nouveau Réalisme. Untitled blue monochrome, (IKB 272) in a sense goes beyond abstraction, aiming to put its viewership into a spiritual state of mind through the establishment of an immaterial void. Klein’s friend and fellow artist Jean Tinguely describes Klein as a “iconoclastic anti-painter” rebelling not just against art history, but painting itself (quoted in M. Koddenberf, Yves Klein: in/out studio, New York, 2016, p. 9).
Yet, in favoring color over form or line, Klein inserts himself in a lineage of artists leading all the way back to Giotto. Visiting Assisi in 1958, Klein wrote on a postcard sent to his gallerist Iris Clert: “In the basilica of St. Francis there are monochromes that are completely blue. It really is incredible, the imbecility of art historians who had never spotted this before. They are all signed ‘Giotto.’ What a precursor! Talk about a precursor! Long live Giotto!” (Postcard to Iris Clert, 7 April 1958, The Estate of Yves Klein). The recto image of the postcard shows a reproduction of Giotto’s fresco depicting the legend of Saint Francis, the saint’s robes colored a rich, ultramarine blue duplicated in the luminous sky.
Klein’s radical blue paintings proved an immediate sensation, enrapturing artists, critics, and the broader public. Italian artists Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana were both inspired by Klein’s revelatory blue paintings, directly leading Manzoni to his Achrome series of white paintings, and Fontana to purchasing a work from the exhibition, now at Fondazione Lucio Fontana. Galleria Apollinaire became a celebrated convening point for the avant-garde, attracting prominent figures including Adriano and Ada Parisot, Lutka Pink, Claude Bellegrade; collectors Italo Magliano and Peppino Palazzoli purchased works from the show, and other examples shown in the exhibition now reside in institutions including the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon. Untitled blue monochrome, (IKB 272) reveals the first definitive thrust Klein made into his famous explorations in his namesake blue pigment which propelled him to worldwide acclaim. This powerful, rare work is the terminus a quo of his pivotal Blue Period, from which his Anthropométries and Archisponges claim their proud inheritance.
Klein conceived his solo show entirely of blue works after realizing that audiences were misinterpreting his previous exhibitions of different colored monochromes as purely decorative. The artist considered his unique blue color to have a quality closest to pure space, associating it with immateriality—evoking a spiritual silence, wherein one might find their own inner meaning. In the present work, Klein used a paint roller to apply his blue pigment over his gauze-covered wooden panel treated with casein, creating a decadent, velvety texture exhibiting an almost unearthly appearance of depth. This distinctive textured surface is exemplary of his earliest Monochromes and crucial to the work’s conceptual apparatus. The delicate ridges that occur organically across the surface ensures the picture functions as a field generating an alternative vision, preventing the viewer from seeing the work as an individualized rectangular shape and instead allowing the support to disappear, revealing the immaterial sublime.
With the present work, Klein consolidates his position at the forefront of the European avant-garde, propelling the possibilities of paint past figuration toward what he with the art critic Pierre Restany termed Nouveau Réalisme. Untitled blue monochrome, (IKB 272) in a sense goes beyond abstraction, aiming to put its viewership into a spiritual state of mind through the establishment of an immaterial void. Klein’s friend and fellow artist Jean Tinguely describes Klein as a “iconoclastic anti-painter” rebelling not just against art history, but painting itself (quoted in M. Koddenberf, Yves Klein: in/out studio, New York, 2016, p. 9).
Yet, in favoring color over form or line, Klein inserts himself in a lineage of artists leading all the way back to Giotto. Visiting Assisi in 1958, Klein wrote on a postcard sent to his gallerist Iris Clert: “In the basilica of St. Francis there are monochromes that are completely blue. It really is incredible, the imbecility of art historians who had never spotted this before. They are all signed ‘Giotto.’ What a precursor! Talk about a precursor! Long live Giotto!” (Postcard to Iris Clert, 7 April 1958, The Estate of Yves Klein). The recto image of the postcard shows a reproduction of Giotto’s fresco depicting the legend of Saint Francis, the saint’s robes colored a rich, ultramarine blue duplicated in the luminous sky.
Klein’s radical blue paintings proved an immediate sensation, enrapturing artists, critics, and the broader public. Italian artists Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana were both inspired by Klein’s revelatory blue paintings, directly leading Manzoni to his Achrome series of white paintings, and Fontana to purchasing a work from the exhibition, now at Fondazione Lucio Fontana. Galleria Apollinaire became a celebrated convening point for the avant-garde, attracting prominent figures including Adriano and Ada Parisot, Lutka Pink, Claude Bellegrade; collectors Italo Magliano and Peppino Palazzoli purchased works from the show, and other examples shown in the exhibition now reside in institutions including the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon. Untitled blue monochrome, (IKB 272) reveals the first definitive thrust Klein made into his famous explorations in his namesake blue pigment which propelled him to worldwide acclaim. This powerful, rare work is the terminus a quo of his pivotal Blue Period, from which his Anthropométries and Archisponges claim their proud inheritance.