Yves Klein In Out Studio

Yves Klein

Yves Klein is one of the most extraordinary and influential figures in post-war avant-garde art. In less than a decade - up until his untimely death in 1962 - he forged a career and built up a body of work that together have influenced and inspired contemporaries and subsequent generations of artists worldwide. Klein sought in his art to liberate the senses, to heighten our sensibility and to intensify our experience of life. In this comprehensive review of his art and ideas, Sidra Stich examines the full range of his diverse creative output - his paintings and sculptures, installations, meticulously documented performances, his copious writings, and his proposals and drawings for visionary projects - and sets them within the context of the art of the time to assess Klein's originality and his legacy.

Yves Klein, 1928-1962

Yves Klein

The career of French artist Yves Klein lasted just eight years (from 1954 to 1962), but in that short span he took Europe by storm. Working in Paris at the height of geometric abstraction and Art Informel, in an intellectual climate dominated by Existentialism, Klein presaged many developments in the postwar avant garde: performance art, Minimalism and Conceptualism (one of his mottoes pronounced, "For color! Against the line and drawing!"). As this volume demonstrates, Klein wrote prolifically, often in the form of manifestos or more ironic texts written to accompany his proto-Conceptual installations. Though Klein is best known for a series of monochromes in his trademark shade, International Klein Blue, his first public showing was of the 1954 artist's book Yves: Peintures, which featured a series of monochromes created in response to cities where he had lived, as a play on the traditional art exhibition catalogue. The medium of the book is consequently an ideal place in which to encounter his art and thought. 110 illustrations