Born in Nice, France, Yves Klein was a major figure in the postwar European avant-garde. He is regarded as a central member of Nouveau Réalisme and a pioneer of conceptual and performance art. Although he lived only 34 years, he left a profound mark on painting, sculpture, music, architecture, and even philosophy.

Klein is best known for his distinctive International Klein Blue (IKB), an intensely saturated ultramarine that appears both brilliant and almost infinitely deep. He believed it could embody spiritual infinity and the dissolution of matter: a color between sky and cosmos.

In 1957, he held the celebrated exhibition Proposte monochrome: Epoca Blu (Blue Period), showing a number of monochrome blue paintings and inviting viewers to immerse themselves in an experience of pure color.

Klein worked beyond painting, often using actions to challenge art's boundaries. His most representative experiments include:

Anthropometries: He had nude female models cover themselves in IKB paint and leave marks on canvas with their bodies as brushes, surrounded by music and an audience. This is regarded as an early form of performance art in which the body becomes the brush.

Architecture of Air: Working with architects, he envisioned invisible architecture, using natural elements such as “air, fire, and water” as building materials and reflecting his pursuit of “immaterial art.”

Leap into the Void (Le Saut dans le Vide, 1960): He photographed himself leaping from a rooftop into the air, symbolizing the flight of the human spirit and faith in freedom.

Klein's central idea was immaterial art, seeking to move art beyond physical matter into energy, spirit and space. In Paris, he even sold Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility in exchange for gold, later casting gold into the Seine to symbolize art's dissolution and transcendence.

Performance art

Minimal Art and Monochrome Painting

Yves Klein was an artist who used “blue” to explore the boundaries of the universe and the spirit. He once said, “Blue is the color of the immaterial; it transcends the visible world.” His art invites us to reconsider: What is “creation”? And what is “existence”?