Klein Yves | Abstract / Nouveau réalisme painter

Yves Klein (28 April 1928 - 6 June 1962) was a French artist** considered an important figure in post-war European art.

He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany.

Klein was a pioneer in the development of performance art, and is seen as an inspiration to and as a forerunner of minimal art, as well as pop art.

Klein was born in Nice, in the Alpes-Maritimes department of France. His parents, Fred Klein and Marie Raymond, were both painters. His father painted in a loose post-impressionist style, while his mother was a leading figure in Art informel, and held regular soirées with other leading practitioners of this Parisian abstract movement.

From 1942-1946, Klein studied at the École Nationale de la Marine Marchande and the École Nationale des Langues Orientales and began practicing judo. At this time, he became friends with Arman (Armand Fernandez) and Claude Pascal and started to paint.

At the age of nineteen, Klein and his friends lay on a beach in the south of France, and divided the world between themselves; Arman chose the earth, Pascal, words, while Klein chose the ethereal space surrounding the planet, which he then proceeded to sign:

With this famous symbolic gesture of signing the sky, Klein had foreseen, as in a reverie, the thrust of his art from that time onwards-a quest to reach the far side of the infinite.

Between 1947 and 1948, Klein conceived his Monotone Symphony (1949, formally Monotone Silence Symphony) that consisted of a single 20-minute sustained chord followed by a 20-minute silence-a precedent to both La Monte Young's drone music and John Cage's 4′33″.

During the years 1948 to 1952, he traveled to Italy, Great Britain, Spain, and Japan. In Japan, at the age of 25, he became a master at judo receiving the rank of yodan (4th dan/degree black-belt) from the Kodokan, which at that time was a remarkable achievement for a westerner.

He also stayed in Japan in 1953. Klein later wrote a book on judo called Les Fondements du judo. In 1954, Klein settled permanently in Paris and began in earnest to establish himself in the art world.

• Legacy

Unaware of the importance of the Nouveau Réalisme movement until the 1990s, New York critics of Klein's time tried to classify him as neo-Dada, and other critics, such as Thomas McEvilley in an essay submitted to Artforum in 1982, classified Klein as an early, though enigmatic, postmodernist.

A sort of parody of Klein's Anthropometry performance is featured in the film Wise Guys (original title: Les Godelureaux) directed by Claude Chabrol released in 1961.

The Yves Klein archive is housed in Phoenix, Arizona, where his widow Rotraut Klein-Moquay has a home. | © Wikipedia

Personalità inquieta, attratto dal pensiero orientale e dalle teorie cosmogoniche, Klein Yves 1928-1962, pittore e scultore francese, legato alla poetica Dadaista, precursore della Body Art ed annesso al Nouveau Réalisme, iniziò dipingendo pannelli monocromi, limitando verso il 1957 la sua gamma al solo blu; nel 1958 tenne a Parigi una spettacolare e provocatoria esposizione (Le Vide) con muri assolutamente nudi e, tra il 1956-1959, eseguì la monumentale decorazione per la facciata del teatro Gelsenkirchen.

In collaborazione con l'architetto W. Runham elaborò una teoria dell'architettura dell'aria, e per sostenerla realizzò progetti sperimentali con coperture d'aria compressa che assicurano la climatizzazione di grandi spazi naturali, letti d'aria, ecc., e tenne una conferenza alla Sorbona: L'evolution de l'art vers l'immatériel 1959. Dopo il 1960, con i Nouveaux Realistes, partecipò a numerose esposizioni con le sue Anthropométries, Cosmogonies, Peintures de feu e i suoi Reliefs planétaires. Intensa anche la sua attività teorica. È anche autore di due composizioni musicali: Sinfonia monotona n°1, 1947, e Sinfonia monotona n°2, 1962.

Il Nouveau Réalisme è un movimento artistico degli anni '60, soprattutto di artisti francesi, che ha per oggetto "materiali desunti dalla realtà, anche quella più banale", anche rifiuti, che vengono raccolti per esempio in sculture tridimensionali. Il suo critico più importante è Pierre Restany. Autori importanti sono Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Martial Raysse, César Baldaccini, Daniel Spoerri, Jacques Villeglé, Christo, Gerard Deschamps, Mimmo Rotella. Questo movimento è collegato al New Dada.