Yves Klein

Yves Klein (1928-1962) was a truly visionary artist. The spectacular works and actions of the French artist and judo master attracted worldwide attention, which was further magnified by his untimely death. The product of a career that spanned a mere seven years, his multifaceted oeuvre anticipated such phenomena as happening and performance as well as Land, Body, and Conceptual Art. Art had no boundaries for Yves Klein. He became involved in architecture - at the practical level as the designer of the music theater in Gelsenkirchen and as a theorist with his ideas for air architecture. He also explored both aspects of immateriality and zones of pictorial sensibility. The volume featuring full-color illustrations of more then one hundred works covers all of Klein's creative phases, from the first Monochromes in different colors to his famous blue paintings (I.K.B. - International Klein Blue) to his sponge reliefs and sculptures, the controversial anthropometries in which Klein used female models as "living brushes," his gold-leaf Monogolds and his last experiments with fire and the elements of nature. Articles by seven authors shed light on the artist and his work from different perspectives. Comments on the man and his art by friends and contemporaries as well as a detailed biography accompanied by numerous documentary photographs showing Yves Klein in his working and living environment round out this presentation.