Yves Klein

Brigitta Broström, Pully

Jan-Eric Löwenadler, Stockholm

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner circa 1982

Lausanne, Galerie Bonnier, Yves Klein, Le Monochrome, Empreintes, 1964, no. 7

Tokyo, Fuji Television Gallery, Yves Klein, 1979, no. 8, illustrated

Paul Wember, Yves Klein, Cologne 1969, p. 105, no. ANT 44, illustrated

“I very quickly perceived that it was the block of the body, that is to say the trunk and part of the thighs, that fascinated me … Only the body is alive, all-powerful, non-thinking. The head, the arms, the hands are only intellectual articulations around the bulk of flesh that is the body True” (Yves Klein in Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, Rice Museum [and travelling], Yves Klein: 1928-1962, A Retrospective, 1982, p. 229).

Cast against a deep, dream-like blue background, Yves Klein’s Ant 44 represents one of the most ethereal compositions in this extraordinary body of work. Executed during a short period just before his premature death in 1962, the Anthropométries constitute Klein’s most daring and elastic contribution to the lexicon of modern art history. Here, Klein fused together the dynamics of performance, body art, painting and, even sculpture. He breathed life back into the language of figuration and the tradition of the nude in art, and did so without ever once engaging with illusionist representation. For Klein, the body was this vital, self-renewing form of energy that was both the sign and the signifier of life. What sets Ant 44 apart from many of the other works in the series is the full and true registration of the female form against the blue background. With this full bodied texture, the organic, fleshy imprint at once evokes the primordial power of primitive expression on a lifesize scale. The totemic form dominates the pictorial space, floating in an ethereal miasma which exaggerates both the physical and psychological presence of the body. Like Cycladic figures, this work possesses a compact power that speaks of a figurative form, yet exudes an altogether abstract energy that is difficult to pigeon-hole.

Klein experimented with the ANT form as early as 1958. On June 5^th that year, before the guests of a dinner party at the apartment of Robert Godet, Klein directed the creation of a blue monochrome painting by having a nude female model, covered with paint use her hands and body to spread paint while she crawled on the surface of the paper that had been laid on the floor. It was not until February 1960, however, that the artist began to incorporate the use of such ‘living brushes’ to create this series of body imprints. Pierre Restany, Klein’s friend and the artistic originator of the Nouveau Realiste movement to which he belonged, coined the term Anthropométrie in reference to the scientific study of the measurements and proportions of the body.