20th century French visual artist (1928–1962)
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He patented a shade of ultramarine so pure it became his signature, then set canvases on fire, directed naked models slathered in paint to roll across paper, and died at 34 having rewritten what a painting could be.
Yves Klein was born in France on 28 April 1928 and spent his short career dismantling the boundaries of art itself. He developed International Klein Blue, a color so vivid he made it his alone, and became a leading member of Nouveau réalisme when art critic Pierre Restany founded the movement in 1960. Klein pioneered performance art, turning the act of creation into spectacle, and his work prefigured both minimalism and pop art in the postwar European scene. He died on 6 June 1962, thirty-four years old, having compressed a revolution into less than a decade.
Sourced, dated quotes from Yves Klein
Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colours are not. They are pre-psychological expanses, red, for example, presupposing a site radiating heat..
I had left the visible, physical blue at the door, outside, in the street. The real blue was inside, the blue of the profundity of space, the blue of my kingdom, of our kingdom!.
I want to take as the canvas for my next picture the entire surface of France. This picture will be called 'The Blue Revolution'.
It was then that I remembered the colour blue, the blue of the sky in nice that was at the origin of my career as monochromist.
My monochrome pictures are not my definite works, but the preparation for my works. They are the left-overs from the creative processes, the ashes.
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