Yves Klein

France Raysse Collection, France
Galerie Bleu, Stockholm
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is much brighter and more vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The sheet is attached to a backing card inscribed by Arman, and held within a thin gilt frame. Upon extremely close inspection, there are two hairline rubs to the paper; one towards the upper left corner on the top edge and another to the centre of the top half of the composition on the right edge. There is a further tiny and extremely minor rub in the top left quadrant. In raking light, an extremely light diagonal crease is visible towards the top left corner.
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"My paintings represent poetic events or, rather, are immobile silent, static witnesses of that essential movement and free life which, in the pictorial moment, is a flame of poetry!" The artist in: Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, Rice Museum; and traveling, Yves Klein 1928-1962: A Retrospective, 1982-1983, p. 220

The only IKB blue and gold leaf work on paper to have ever come to auction, the present lot exquisitely merges the two colours that have become synonymous with Yves Klein himself. In 1959, fascinated by the spiritual, art historical and visual potentials of the fragile substance, Klein extended monochrome painting to include gold. Here, its delicate inclusion on the already mesmerising and gem-like surface of the present work fuses two of the pivotal themes within Klein's oeuvre within a single plane; the Void as expressed through the spiritual resonance of IKB blue and the timeless purity of the immaterial as expressed through the medium of gold.

Klein's oeuvre is deeply rooted in philosophy and he drew on an array of sources, ranging from Zen Buddhism to the practice of Judo. Endeavouring towards the achievement of a more 'truthful art', Klein sought to reflect philosophical value through the use of unmediated colour. Laying the foundations of a 'school of sensibility' Klein encouraged all those who wanted to learn the new language of art and dubbed himself 'Yves le Monochrome'. Anti-illusionistic and anti-referential, the artist's use of blue and gold because ostensibly his most pure of compositions, yet hidden beneath the richly saturated pigment lies a profound and complex conceptual belief structure that has influenced generations of subsequent artists and established Klein as one of the pre-eminent artists of his generation.

 

Synthesising the modern and the post-modern, this work engages with abstract art, taking non-representational art to its logical conclusion, whilst challenging the viewer's conception of what art is, or should be. For Yves Klein, single planes of colour did not infer simplicity but instead the possibility for limitless space and meaning. The ethereal dance of gold on the surface of the intensely grounding blue pigment of this work provides the viewer with a transcendental and exponential experience of infinity, colour becoming the vehicle to something much more than their mere appearance. "For me, colours are living beings, highly developed individuals that become part of us, as of everything. Colours are the true inheritance of space. Line merely travels through, crosses; it merely passes by." The Artist in: Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, Rice Museum; and traveling, Yves Klein 1928-1962: A Retrospective, 1982-1983, p. 220