Yves Klein belonged to the early avant-garde of the post-war era. He is considered a concept artist and fore-runner of Pop Art. Yves Klein dealt with monochromes early on and created IKB, International Klein Blue; the name he patented for a luminous ultramarine blue, and typically used in his work. Klein‘s work included so-called anthropometries - paintings made from prints of bodies covered in paint. In addition, he composed music, monotone and thus quasi in the tradition of John Cage. Klein became particularly well-known as a performance artist through his fire images: naked female bodies acted as templates for image carriers that were to be sprayed with water. Hence, they covered the surfaces with their bodies and created a sketch outline, preventing the medium from getting wet. After this process, Klein flame-treated the surfaces with large-format flame-throwers, and due to the impregnation process, the results were varying degrees of carbonisation and almost figurative images therewith. The entire procedure, including an assistant dressed as a fire-fighter, was captured on film and still today is considered an impressive documentation of earlier Performance Art. The largest work that was ever created by him is the design of the foyer of the Musical Theatre im Revier, Gelsenkirchen (19571959), with its 20x7m large blue sponge-reliefs. From 1957 onwards, with the beginning of his Blue Period, Klein increasingly de-materialised his art, culminating in an exhibition, ‚Le Vide‘ (The Void) in the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris in 1958. Klein painted the walls a radiant white and in his imagination, he exhibited his blue works. Klein‘s exemplary contribution to conceptual art. In May 1957, Yves Klein held exhibitions in 2 galleries: Yves, Propositions monochromes in the Iris Clert Gallery and Pigment Pur in the Colette Allendy Gallery. In the latter, he also showed a fire image for the first time and respectively arranged one of the rooms as an installation, entitled „Immateriell“, as an empty space. He sent the invitations to these exhibitions using IKB-coloured, self-made postal stamps, the stocks from which the work by Klein, on display here, originates.
Yves Klein Timbre Bleu, 1957/59 IKB blue on stamps 4 x 5 cm