NIZZA (FRANCE) 1928 – PARIGI (FRANCE) 1962
Yves Klein was the most influential, prominent, and controversial French artist to emerge in the 1950s He is remembered above all for his use of a single color, the rich shade of ultramarine that he made his own: International Klein Blue But the success of his sadly short-lived career lay in attacking many of the ideas that underpinned the abstract painting that had been dominant in France since the end of the Second World War Klein‘s pictures may also be read in a contradictory fashion He was genuinely fascinated by mystical ideas, by notions of the infinite, the undefinable, the absolute, and his use of a single rich and suggestive tone of blue might be seen as an attempt to free the viewer from all imposed ideas and let her mind soar For, as Klein believed, lines in pictures were a form of prison grating, and only color offered the path to freedom…
