Modern & Samtida konst
+ Design & Klockor
Till katalogen »
To be sold at our Important Sale: Modern & Contemporary Art + Design 13 – 15 May 2025
Lot 655 Yves Klein (France 1928‑1962). ”Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 330)”. Signed Yves on the reverse. Pure pigment and synthetic resin on cartolin, 21.5 x 18 cm.
The authenticity of the work is confirmed by R.U.K./Yves Klein Archive in Paris.
1.500.000 – 2.000.000 SEK
€ 136.000 – 182.000
Galerie Iris Clert, Paris (stamp verso).
Artist Bert-Johnny Nilsson (1934‑2004), Åhus.
Thence by descent to the present owner.
”The real blue was inside, the blue of the profundity of space, the blue of my kingdom, of our kingdom! …the materialization of blue, the colored space that cannot be seen but which we impregnate ourselves with.”
– Yves Klein
Yves Klein was a mystic, a spiritualist and a conceptualist with the vision to express the immaterial and the endless through colour. He never took any formal training in painting, but grew up in a creative home where both his parents were artists. He was born in Nice and lived in the younger years in Paris with his family but spent the summers on the French Riviera. Here he made the acquaintance of the poet Claude Pascal and the burgeoning sculptor Arman. One night sitting on the beach, the three friends divided the world between them: Arman chose the material world, Pascal the air and the words, while Klein was presented the endless space of the heavens. This made a great impact on his art from that time onwards. United by shared enthusiasm for physical training, the three considered judo to be the sport to provide an almost spiritual perception of space. Klein travelled frequently around Europe and also went to Japan in 1953, where he became, at the age of 25, a master at judo receiving the rank of yodan (4th dan/degree black-belt) from the Kodokan, becoming the first European to rise to that rank.
Yves Klein started to paint monochromes already in 1949. In his eyes, clear ties existed between gold, blue and pink. Together these three colours created the flow between the transient material world and the spiritual state. The colours created a ’holy trinity’, where Monoblue represented the endless, Monogold the spirituality and Monopink the love. His ambition was to stimulate feelings and sensations without depending on lines, figures or abstract symbols. The blue colour became more and more important for the artist and in 1957 he created the International Klein Blue (IKB) in collaboration with the Parisian paint supplier Edouard Adam. IKB uses ultramarine pigment with a matte, synthetic resin binder which suspends the colour and allows the pigment to maintain as much of its original qualities and intensity of colour as possible. The colour was described as ”The Medium” by the artist and expressed what he was striving to achieve; the sense of limitless space within the pure colour. He stated: “Through color I feel the sentiment of complete identification with space; I am truly free…To feel the soul without explanation, without vocabulary, and to represent that feeling… This is, I believe, foremost among the reasons that led me to the monochrome”.
The present work belongs to his famous monochrome series, a testament to his “idea of absolute unity in perfect serenity”. Klein experimented with the surface texture and created his monochromes with softly raised ridges and smoother recessions. Reminiscing a fluorescent blue sea, his dynamic works manifests the dynamic incandescence that only the Klein blue could convey. Klein debuted his monochromes to the public in 1955 and showed more of his revolutionary work in 1956 and 1957. One of the works shown at Galleria Apollinaire in Milan in 1957 was notably purchased by Lucio Fontana, who famously remarked: “Klein is the one who understands the problem of space with his blue dimension… He is really abstract, one of the artists who have done something important.” Blue allowed Klein to realize the infinite space of the universe and it also worked as a natural symbol of nature with its reference to the sky and sea. His striking compositions suggest the expanse of eternity and invites his viewers to “bathe in cosmic sensibility”.
Klein’s contribution to modern art is immense. He was a pioneer of his time and his work continues to shape and define today’s experiences of art. The present work captures the pristine, untouched brilliance and optical effect of Yves Klein’s own colour – the International Klein Blue, and offers an exciting opportunity to acquire one of Klein’s eye-catching monochromes. ■