He was a co-founder and leading representative of the Nouveau Réalisme art movement in France.
Yves Klein is regarded as Avant-garde-artist and as a forerunner of the Pop Art. He also organised his first performances (Action art). Klein wrote essays and made several films. He is best known for his monochrome Image compositionsin particular those that he developed in a programme called International Klein Blue (IKB, =PB29, =CI 77007) patented Ultramarine blue but also in gold and pink. A quiet, meditative way of working is typical of Klein.
Yves Klein's blue sponge reliefs for the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen
From 1957 Klein developed the Anthropometries with models who painted their bodies on the canvas, naked and soaked in blue paint. The first major event in this regard was the 1960 performance at the Galerie Internationale d'Art Contemporain in Paris. Anthropometry of the Blue Epoch took place. An orchestra played a piece composed by Klein, the Monotonous symphonywhich consisted of only a single sound. Klein created his largest and most important works between 1957 and 1959 in the new building of the Music theatre in the district in Gelsenkirchen. In collaboration with the architect Werner Ruhnau and other artists, he developed large wall-high blue reliefs especially for this building, some of which were covered with natural sponges. He also produced designs for an unrealised theatre forecourt, the "Fire-Water-Air Square". Among other things, he experimented with Air curtains of strong air currents which, like a pane of glass, could keep out rain, for example.
From 1957 dematerialised his art more and more, until in 1958 he was invited to the Paris gallery Iris Clert presented the whitewashed gallery space he had emptied as an immaterial exhibition of his blue monochromes. The exhibition was entitled Le vide ("The Void"). He thus became part of the contemporary movement of Conceptual art.
[Excerpt from Wikipedia]