He was a co-founder and leading representative of the Nouveau Réalisme art movement in France.
Yves Klein is considered to be Avantgarde-artists and as a precursor of the Pop art. In addition, he organized his first performances (Action art). Klein wrote essays and made several films. Best known are his monochrome Image compositions, in particular those that he developed in a process known as the International Small Blue (IKB, =PB29, =CI 77007) patented Ultramarine blue but also in gold and pink. Typical for Klein is a quiet, meditative way of working.
Yves Klein's blue sponge reliefs for the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen
From 1957 Klein developed the Anthropometrics with models who painted the canvas with their bodies naked and soaked in blue paint. For this, the first major event took place in 1960 at the Galerie Internationale d'Art Contemporain in Paris, the performance Anthropometry of the Blue Epoch took place. For this purpose, an orchestra played a piece composed by Klein, the Monotone symphonywhich consisted of only one sound. Klein created his largest and most important works between 1957 and 1959 in the new building of the Musiktheaters im Revier 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 set with natural sponges. He also produced designs for an unrealized theater forecourt, the "Fire-Water-Air Square." For this he experimented among other things with Air curtains from strong air currents that could keep out rain, for example, like a pane of glass.
From 1957 dematerialized his art more and more, until in 1958, in the Parisian gallery Iris Clert presented the whitewashed gallery space he had emptied as an immaterial exhibition of his blue monochromes. The exhibition was titled Le vide ("The Void"). He thus became part of the contemporary movement of Concept art.
[Excerpt from Wikipedia]
