伊夫·克萊因

Ora Zucker, Brussels

Sale: Sotheby's, London, Post-War and Contemporary Art, 2 July 1987, Lot 687

Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York 

Sale: Sotheby’s, London, Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Ceramics, 15 October 1992, Lot 350

Private Collection 

Sale: Sotheby’s, New York, Contemporary Art Part I, 6 May 1997, Lot 28

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Nicolas Charlet, Yves Klein, Paris 2000, p. 75, illustrated in colour 

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is brighter and more vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals minor spots of burnishing in a few isolated places, most notably in the lower right corner and half way up the right vertical turnover edge. No restoration is apparent when examined 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."

Propelling an arresting impression of iridescent blue into its surrounds, Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 241) is an exemplary constituent of a long revered aesthetic legacy that certifies Yves Klein’s unique and enduring genius. As part of an intensely sustained line of inquiry, this work is a confluence of the visionary artist’s multivalent philosophical fascination with the elemental and the limits of human experience. Provoking ruminations on the power and essence of colour, our capacities for perceiving it, and an artwork’s ability to embody it, Klein’s IKB Monochromes pose deep phenomenological and ontological questions whilst toying with notions of the sublime. His ability to substantiate these concepts with strident simplicity marks him as one of the Twentieth Century’s greatest artists.

Inspired by the journals of Eugène Delacroix, Klein similarly longed to liberate painting from an insistence on the demarcated line: “Ordinary painting, painting as it is commonly understood, is for me a prison window, whose lines, contours, forms and composition are all determined by bars. For me the lines concretise our mortality, our emotional life, our reason, and even our spirituality. They are our psychological boundaries, our historic past, our skeletal framework; they are our weaknesses and our desires, our faculties, and our contrivances” (Yves Klein, 'Comment et pourpuoi, en 1957', in: Klaus Ottmann, trans., Overcoming the Problematics of Art: The Writings of Yves Klein, New York 2007, p. VIII). Thus, Klein drastically abandoned representation, actively pursuing the stark ‘monochrome’ canvas as a space to indulge in the purest expression of colour – painting’s most visceral force which he saw as “the natural and human measure; it bathes in a cosmic sensibility” (Ibid.). An impassioned enquiry into the invocation of heightened consciousness through the power of colour subsequently drove much of the artist’s practice.

Klein’s first two oil painting exhibitions – at the Club des Solitaires, Paris in 1955 and Galerie Colette Allendy, 1956 – included canvases in a variety of colours such as orange, yellow, red, pink and blue. The public’s disheartening compulsion to view the works as collectively interlinked urged him to remain devoted to one colour, and thus enunciate his ‘blue epoch’. Collaborating with Parisian paint dealer Édouard Adam, he created the ‘International Klein Blue’ that became the most influential medium and sustained subject of his oeuvre.

Whilst most pigments are dulled by the binding mediums in oil paint, Klein calibrated a solution of saturated ultramarine, suspended in a synthetic resin which exposed the raw power of uninhibited pigment. With a concentrated tonal range, all visible light rays are absorbed into the thickly painted surface of IKB 241, except the deepest and most vibrant blues, which are reflected back into our field of vision. This endows the canvas with a unique monochromatic density and a velvety depth that infers infiniteness, a void.

Klein advocated that an artwork may overcome its concrete existence: “paintings create ambiences, sensitive climates, phenomenal states, and particular natures that are perceptible yet intangible, at once mobile and static, balanced beyond phenomenology of time!” (Yves Klein, ‘The Monochrome Adventure’ in: ibid., p. 148). A significant breakthrough exhibition for the IKB series (Proposte Monochrome, Epoca Blu at the Galerie Apollinaire, Milan in 1957) featured eleven identical canvases supported by poles, floating a short distance from the wall. Here, blue was pushed forth and dispersed into both the physical and psychological space of the viewer, with Klein inviting a near spiritual state of perception: “I became a specialist of space, which is my ultimate way of treating colour. It is no longer a question of seeing colour, but rather of perceiving it” (Yves Klein, ‘My Position in the Battle Between Line and Colour’ Paris, 16 April 1958 in: ibid., p. 19). Whilst Kazmir Malevich’s 1915 Black Square introduced the revolutionary presence of the monochrome as a logical endpoint to painting, Klein’s alchemic approach towards creating a single mystic blue monochrome proposed a reinvigorated purpose for the entire discipline.

Blue has long held metaphysical significance in art, from the precious lapis lazuli pigments used to clothe the renaissance Virgin Mary, to the melancholic elegies of Picasso’s Blue Period. For Klein, it captured the essence of the infinite and the immeasurable. Curiously, it was the intense blue sky depicted in the ethereal ceiling frescoes of the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi that Klein claimed as the “real precursor” to his monochromes (Yves Klein, ‘The Monochrome Adventure’ in: ibid., p. 165). Recounted in his Chelsea Hotel Manifesto, in 1946 the young Yves Klein boldly signed the sky, claiming the celestial space surrounding the earth as his first artwork. The sky is something of a sensory paradox: seemingly tangible with a distant blue opacity, it maintains an ungraspable infinity. Conversely, Klein’s IKB 241 claims greater depth than it physically substantiates. With perceivable elements that remain interminably out of reach, both approach the Kantian sublime: a limitless presence that the human mind finds an exquisite mixture of pleasure and pain in attempting to comprehend.

With an exuberant career cut short at its pinnacle by his tragic death in 1962, Klein’s work remains increasingly coveted, with his monochromes maintaining an ever-growing fascination. IKB 241 comes from a period of high critical success when Klein was finding wider audiences. Its creation in 1960 coincides with the founding of the Nouveau Réalisme group, as well as the first presentation of his Anthopometries. Despite movements into new mediums at this point, the sonorous blue of IKB 241 remains a relic of Klein’s most sustained project and his profound maxim that “a painter must paint a single masterpiece constantly” (Yves Klein, ‘Some Excerpts from my Journal’ in: ibid., p. 13).