Yves Klein

(1928-1962)

Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 53)
1959

Footnotes

Provenance
René de Montaigu Collection, France
Sale: Tajan, Paris, Succession René de Montaigu, 13 June 1995, Lot 20
Private Collection, France
Sale: Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris, Art Contemporain, 29 January 2001, Lot 61
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Literature
Paul Wember, Yves Klein Catalogue Raisonné, Cologne 1969, p. 72, description of the work listed



Radiant in colour and sublime in form, Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 53) from 1959 is a truly captivating work by the acclaimed French artist Yves Klein. Born in Nice in 1928, Klein's influence on the landscape of contemporary art has been extraordinarily profound. Despite a fatal heart attack at the young age of 34, Klein had a remarkably active career creating a vast body of work that continuously pushed the boundaries between painting, sculpture and thought-provoking performance art. Klein's exhibition The Void, at Iris Clert Gallery in 1958, held only a year before the present work was created, was a revolutionary conceptual masterpiece where the artist presented a completely empty gallery space in Paris. Thousands of visitors attended the exhibition and expected to see his latest paintings, but instead they were confronted with an empty room and provocative bare white walls. Klein's pioneering Anthropometries also shocked the art world at the time. The artist engaged nude female models covered in paint and used them as human paint brushes, creating impressions of their bodies and working their flesh directly onto the surface. Whilst incredibly controversial and daring at the time, Klein endeavoured to create a more religious, intellectual, and immersive theatrical experience in his practice.

Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 53) was executed at a pivotal moment in Klein's career. His monochrome paintings which originally began in various colour tones - vibrant oranges, deep purples and exuberant greens – had been exhibited for the first time at the Club des Solitaires in Paris only four years earlier in 1955. Quoted in the exhibition catalogue, Klein discusses his journey to this crucial monochrome series and the assertive experience of his paintings which was achieved through uniformity: "After passing through several periods, my pursuits have led me to the creation of uniformly monochrome paintings. Using multiple techniques, after appropriate preparation of the foundation, each of my canvases is thus covered by one or more layers of a unique and uniform colour. No drawing and no variation of hue appear there is only strictly uniform colour. In such manner, the dominant force asserts itself upon the entire painting." (the artist in: Yves Klein Yves Peintures, Paris 1955, p. 33).

Two years later in 1957, Klein finalised the fabrication of the deep and intense ultramarine pigment that he would patent in his name. It is this emotive blue that would dominate his oeuvre and form the basis of his monochrome abstraction, sublimely realised in Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 53). In the present work, layers of powdery International Klein Blue pigment, otherwise known as IKB, saturate the stoneware in a rich variation of colour, drawing the eye over the striations that mark the concave plane. The viewer is drawn into the surface starting from outer edges and circling inwards. Few artists have been so closely affiliated to one colour as is the case with Klein and the electric IKB. As a result, the two are inextricably linked and synonymously bound to each other.

Klein believed the purpose of colour was to strip back the materiality of the canvas or the surface, creating a doorway to a higher experience that transcends the mere physical. His powdery IKB pigment represents a physical representation of a cosmic force or an otherworldly experience which is dependent on the light, the individual viewer and their own sensibility. Indeed, this cosmic energy is palpable when you are placed in front of Klein's monochromes. Regardless of the size or the form; whether applied to canvas, ceramic or to the ethereal anthropomorphic Sculpture-Eponges, you are immediately drawn to the velvety colour, losing yourself to the limitless plane and thereby experiencing infinite freedom as his works act as a conduit into a deep void, unhindered from a specific narrative. Transfixing the viewer and artist alike, IKB evoked the transcendental experience of Klein's childhood spent in Nice, from gazing up towards the luminosity of the limitless sky and out towards the endless azure Mediterranean Sea.

This release of the body and mind presents a certain spirituality to Klein's work that was evident throughout his life. Before devoting himself to his artistic practice, Judo was Klein's first love. He travelled to Japan in 1952 and trained as a judoka for a period of fifteen months. Klein's interest in Eastern philosophy was also piqued on this trip, studying Zen Buddhism where the tenets of emptiness and the disavowal of the self can be seen in many of his works. With his interest in Zen Buddhism and combined with his Catholic faith, Klein was rather philosophical and interested in religious iconography. He would often use gold and rose along with his signature colour in his works, recalling the holy trinity. Gold for the Father, blue for the Son and pink for the Holy Spirit.

Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 53) was originally held in the esteemed collection of the prominent collector and businessman René de Montaigu. Born in Paris in 1897, Monsieur de Montaigu was incredibly passionate about the arts, acquiring works by many of the leading artists of the Twentieth Century such as Ellsworth Kelly, Jean Dubuffet, Christo, Lucio Fontana, Georges Mathieu and Yves Klein. Many works from his collection have been admitted into international institutions; one such example is the Wisteria Dining Room, Paris, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. An entire room complete with walnut wall panels and intricately painted murals, the Wisteria Dining Room is a celebrated example of Art Nouveau design and architecture and was conceived by the French Symbolist artist Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer. A generous patron, René de Montaigu was a founding member of the 'Association of Friends of the Centre Pompidou' in Paris and gifted a painting by the German artist Wols to the museum in 1979.

Harmonious in form and size, Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 53) presents a wonderful opportunity to acquire an incredibly rare work from the artist's oeuvre. Residing in the collections of prominent international institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Centre Pompidou, Paris, The Tate Modern, London, The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Klein's legacy continues to endure and mesmerise through a world of endless colour and possibilities.