Yves Klein
IKB 103
Date 1956
Medium Pigment and synthetic resin on fabric on board
Dimensions 78 x 56 cm
Inventory ID UID 102-306
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In the preface to the exhibition of Yves Klein’s first monochromes at the Galerie Colette Allendy in 1956, Pierre Restany wrote: '[…] Yves proposes a very enriching cure to asthenic silence. His rigorously monochromatic proposals are situated well beyond the intricacies of other worlds, already hardly perceptible to our common sense of the reasonable, doubtless beside what used to be called ‘the art of painting’, in any event on the level of the rarest and most essential affective resonances: each defines a visual field, a colour space, free of any graphic transcription, thereby eluding duration, dedicated to the uniform expression of a certain hue […]’. This work is part of the eleven monochromes first shown at the Apollinaire gallery in Milan in 1957 (Proposte monochrome, epoca blu). All share the same format and are uniformly painted in ultramarine blue, suspended by a system of brackets at a distance of twenty centimetres from the wall, saturating the restricted space of this small gallery. The blue panels are not framed, with the blue covering the sides. For the first time, Klein showed an entire room full of blue monochromes, one of which was bought by Lucio Fontana. Manzoni also visited the exhibition. There are one hundred and ninety-four IKB catalogued blue monochromes. AC
Offered to Tinguely by Klein, Tinguely family; acquired at Sotheby's, London, 28 June 1995.