Yves Klein - Work, writings

The son of painters Fred Klein and Marie Raymond, Yves Klein conquered the European art scene in the eight years of his brief career, from 1954 to 1962. The motto he adopted as a member of the Order of Archers of San Sebastian «Up the color! Against the lines and drawings!» it is, in addition to a Freudian statement, an authentic proclamation of his way of understanding the practice of art. Klein worked in Paris, in an intellectual environment dominated by existentialism, during the heyday of geometric abstraction and informal art, anticipating many postwar avant-garde movements such as minimalist art, conceptual art, and performance art. Despite having composed a "monotone" symphony as early as 1948 ("whose theme is what I wanted my life to be"), his first work was Yves: Peintures, an artist's book published in November 1954, in which, Parodying traditional catalogues, he made a series of intense monochromes linked to different cities where he had previously lived. In later series, the artist made monochromes in orange, yellow, red and pink, but it was in 1957 when he inaugurated the most characteristic series of monochromes of his work, using an ultramarine blue of his own invention. In the last years of his career, with his body paintings or anthropometries, he recorded the physical energy of the body through a pigment patented by himself and known by the name of International Klein Blue (IKB), in search of immaterial spirituality through pure color. Author: Klaus Ottmann Language: Spanish Pages: 160 pp. Dimensions: ‎ 29 x 22.5 cm Publisher: ‎ Polígrafa Editions Binding: Hardcover Conservation: It may show marks and slight damage