Lot Essay
This work is recorded in the Yves Klein Archives under no. IKB 272 and will be included in the new edition of the Catalogue Raisonné of the artist's work being prepared under the supervision of Rotraut Moquay-Klein.
This painting is one of the original eleven Blue Monochromes of the same size and format exhibited at the Galleria Apollinaire in January 1957. This seminal exhibition officially inaugurated Klein's phenomenal Blue Period.
Each of the canvases exhibited in Milan are composed of a blue monochromed surface which extends over the matte, rippled texture of the picture plane and continues around the sides of the unframed panel. Although the eleven panels are similar in general appearance, Klein insisted that each could transform the onlooker to a different world, each having a singular effect. This cosmic uniqueness was reflected in the way that each canvas was priced differently, the buyer supposedly having the ability to distiguish its special qualities through what Klein called "a pictorial sensibility."
The Appollinaire exhibition took place at a time when Klein had, after a year of experimentation, succeeded in creating his since internationally renowned ultramarine pigment, which he later patented as International Klein Blue (I.K.B). "I monochromed my canvases with devotion, and out of this rose the all-powerful blue, to dominate now and forever," stated Klein.
The covering of the canvas in a pure colour was indeed a breakthrough in Klein's pictorial ambitions. It was through the monochrome paintings that Klein's art transgressed boundaries - of tradition, language, and emotion. In the words of Pierre Restany, "It is through pure colour that Yves Klein materialised his sensory intuitions and activated a mechanism of extra-lucid perception."
The blue was the ultimate in Klein's search for purity in the form of a single colour. The colour blue, in holding universal associations of sky and sea, is limitless. It eradicates the dividing line of the horizon, and unifies heaven and earth. "Blue has no dimensions. It is beyond the dimensions which other colours partake," wrote Klein in 1957.
In the present work, the boundless blue seems to surge up and slide away from the panel itself. It is a tangible representation of infinite space, a window to a pure spiritual world. In this way, the work transports the onlooker into another dimension, just as a tantra might carry a buddhist observer through meditation into the realm of the divine. Restany wrote that Klein saw colour as a materialised sense of energy. The energy that this panel emits is, at once, both stimulating and calming.
The extra-dimensional depth which the panel possesses is apparent in both physical and psychological terms. It is because the panel is free from form, line and narrative, and defies all reference to anything specific outside itself, that it produces an extra-sensory experience. It is the void that is represented - indefinable.
The exhibition at the Galleria Apollinaire received international acclaim. Amongst those who went to see it were the Italian artists Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana. Manzoni was immediately influenced by Klein's work and Fontana bought one of the eleven panels for himself. However, they were only two of the many artists and collectors whose entire approach towards art was revolutionised after experiencing Klein's blue monochromes.
This painting is one of the original eleven Blue Monochromes of the same size and format exhibited at the Galleria Apollinaire in January 1957. This seminal exhibition officially inaugurated Klein's phenomenal Blue Period.
Each of the canvases exhibited in Milan are composed of a blue monochromed surface which extends over the matte, rippled texture of the picture plane and continues around the sides of the unframed panel. Although the eleven panels are similar in general appearance, Klein insisted that each could transform the onlooker to a different world, each having a singular effect. This cosmic uniqueness was reflected in the way that each canvas was priced differently, the buyer supposedly having the ability to distiguish its special qualities through what Klein called "a pictorial sensibility."
The Appollinaire exhibition took place at a time when Klein had, after a year of experimentation, succeeded in creating his since internationally renowned ultramarine pigment, which he later patented as International Klein Blue (I.K.B). "I monochromed my canvases with devotion, and out of this rose the all-powerful blue, to dominate now and forever," stated Klein.
The covering of the canvas in a pure colour was indeed a breakthrough in Klein's pictorial ambitions. It was through the monochrome paintings that Klein's art transgressed boundaries - of tradition, language, and emotion. In the words of Pierre Restany, "It is through pure colour that Yves Klein materialised his sensory intuitions and activated a mechanism of extra-lucid perception."
The blue was the ultimate in Klein's search for purity in the form of a single colour. The colour blue, in holding universal associations of sky and sea, is limitless. It eradicates the dividing line of the horizon, and unifies heaven and earth. "Blue has no dimensions. It is beyond the dimensions which other colours partake," wrote Klein in 1957.
In the present work, the boundless blue seems to surge up and slide away from the panel itself. It is a tangible representation of infinite space, a window to a pure spiritual world. In this way, the work transports the onlooker into another dimension, just as a tantra might carry a buddhist observer through meditation into the realm of the divine. Restany wrote that Klein saw colour as a materialised sense of energy. The energy that this panel emits is, at once, both stimulating and calming.
The extra-dimensional depth which the panel possesses is apparent in both physical and psychological terms. It is because the panel is free from form, line and narrative, and defies all reference to anything specific outside itself, that it produces an extra-sensory experience. It is the void that is represented - indefinable.
The exhibition at the Galleria Apollinaire received international acclaim. Amongst those who went to see it were the Italian artists Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana. Manzoni was immediately influenced by Klein's work and Fontana bought one of the eleven panels for himself. However, they were only two of the many artists and collectors whose entire approach towards art was revolutionised after experiencing Klein's blue monochromes.