Yves Klein

Gallery Gmurzynska, Zürich
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2004

Paul Wember, Yves Klein, Cologne 1969, p. 117, illustrated
Nicolas Charlet, Yves Klein, Paris 2002, p. 180, detail illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the blue background is slightly lighter overall and the reds tend more towards a light rose pink. The catalogue illustration fails to convey the metallic quality of the gold paint throughout the figure's body. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is minor horizontal undulation across the canvas, which is inherent to the artist's working method. There is an artist's pinhole at the extreme lower left edge towards the bottom left corner. No restoration is apparent under ultra-violet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

ANT SU 14 is from a small series known as the Anthropométries Suaires - or Shroud Anthropométries - made by Yves Klein between 1960 and 1961. While in the larger Anthropometries series the corporeal imprints of the model are made on paper, in this contemporaneous series Klein employs a support of finely woven fabric, which lends these works a more delicate, ethereal quality. Evoking the mystery of the Shroud of Turin which allegedly bears the imprint of Jesus of Nazareth as he was placed in the tomb, this series ranks among Klein's most famous and important groups of works. The largest of its kind to be offered at auction, the present example is made all the more precious by the superimposed layers of exquisite rose pink, gold and black impressions of the female form, the vestiges of Klein's living brushes, set against a celestial haze of the artist's signature IKB dappled with gold. Working from the premise that the body is a cipher of physical, sensorial and spiritual energy, Klein choreographs his models across the canvas leaving remnants, residual traces and memories of their passage in time and space. Here the usually soft, fluid curves of the female are deployed in such a manner to create the geometric form of a diamond, the precious gem stone whose purity is absolute. Combined with the shimmering seams of gold pigment, this creates allusion to the themes of immateriality and the void which are central to Klein's oeuvre.

The Anthropométries - a term coined by Klein's friend the critic Pierre Restany - signalled the confluence of several divergent ideas and a new point of departure for the artist who had not previously drawn attention to the human body in his art. The seminal idea derived from a dinner party, hosted by Robert Giodet at his apartment in the Ile Saint-Louis in June 1958, in which Klein orchestrated an informal performance in which a nude model smeared in blue pigment sprawled herself across a canvas. Unlike the present series, however, the intention of this early precursor was not to create imprints or a sense of movement of the human form across the canvas, but rather to fill the canvas so completely as to create a monochrome, much like those exhibited at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan one year prior.

The final epiphany came to Klein as he studied his models moving around his studio, interacting with his blue Monochromes. While life drawing was not a function of Klein's creative process, he had developed the practice of having nude models in his work space since he felt that the sensual climate that they engendered helped stabilise his Monochromes and hone his understanding of the universe. "The shape of the body, its curves, its colours between life and death, are not of interest to me. It is the pure affective atmosphere that is valuable" (Yves Klein, 'Le Vrai Devient Réalité', cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Hayward Gallery, Yves Klein: Leap into the Void, 1995, p. 171) While Klein never used the models as direct figurative referents, they were fundamental to his creative process as he searched for a way of capturing their essence. This reached its pinnacle in the Anthropometries: "My models were my brushes. I made them smear themselves with colour and imprint themselves on canvas... But this was only the first step. I thereafter devised a sort of ballet of girls on a grand canvas which resembled the white mat of judo contests" (Ibid p. 172).

On the 9^th March 1960 at the Galerie d'Art Contemporain in the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, Klein presided over a now legendary one night action spectacle in which the artist breathed new life into the avant-garde and introduced an entirely new art form: the Anthropométries. In front of a select crowd of critics and gallery patrons, the artist - dressed in a tuxedo and adorned with the Maltese Cross of his Saint Sebastian brotherhood - orchestrated his pigment-smeared models to create static imprints against the paper-lined walls and dynamic movement paintings as they dragged one another along the floor, also lined with paper. Conducted with ritual and formality, the occasion had a conspicuous air of theatricality entirely consonant with Klein's assiduous promotion of his art and the 'Blue Revolution'. In the background, three violinists, three cellists and three choristers played the droning 'Monotone Symphony', twenty minutes of imperturbable one-note music followed by twenty minutes of silence. Minimal and austere, the 'Monotone Symphony' bore witness to the promotion of the role of chance and silence in the musical 'Happenings' of John Cage, while the performance itself elevated the painting process itself to a grand theatrical idea that dramatically presages the evolution of performance art and forced the critical reorientation that took place in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The deep conceptual premise of the series is that flesh confers to the work the phenomenological presence of the body. Conceiving of the body as a force of creativity, a marking apparatus that is itself a sign and signifier of life, Klein transforms the human body - the erstwhile passive subject of traditional figurative art - into the agent of artistic creativity. In so doing, Klein positions himself, the artist, in the role of director/producer, a catalyst in this creative act, set at a distance from the work itself. Klein had previously sought to distance himself from his creative output by effacing the personalised artist's touch by using a roller instead of a brush to apply the paint to his Monochromes in a uniform layer. In the present work, Klein's ongoing investigation into authority, authenticity and originality in art reaches its apogee: "That was, finally, the solution to the problems of distance in painting: my brushes were alive and remote-controlled" (Klein cited in Exhibition Catalogue, Ostfildern-Ruit, Yves Klein, 2004, p. 126).

The culmination of numerous and varied thematic strands of Yves Klein's conceptually innovative and materially revolutionary oeuvre, ANT SU 14 witnesses the marriage of spiritual notions' immateriality with the heady and sensual world of the corporeal in a painting of unmitigated beauty.