Yves Klein

<p>In the mid-1950s, <strong>Yves Klein</strong> (1928–1962) declared that “a new world calls for a new man.” With his idiosyncratic style and huge charisma, this bold artist would go on to pursue a brief but bountiful career, <strong>producing more than 1,000 paintings over seven years</strong> in an oeuvre now considered a mainstay of postwar modernism.<br /><br /> Klein made his name above all with his large monochrome canvases in his own patented hue of blue. <strong>International Klein Blue</strong> (IKB), composed of pure pigment and binding medium, is at once rich and luminous, evocative and decorative, and was conceived by Klein as a means of evoking the immateriality and infinitude of the world. The works of this <strong>“Blue Revolution”</strong> seem to draw us into another dimension, as if hypnotized by a perfect summer sky. Klein was also renowned for his deployment of <strong>“living brushes</strong>,<strong>”</strong> in which naked women, daubed in International Klein Blue, would make imprints of their bodies on large sheets of paper. <br /><br /> This Basic Art introduction presents key Klein works to introduce an artist who was at once a showman, inventor, and <strong>pioneer of performance art</strong>. With page after page of the ever-alluring International Klein Blue, it is both an essential guide to a modern art master and a meditation on the<strong> unique effects of a single color</strong>.</p>