Chromatlas

Person

Yves Klein

He showed 11 identical blue paintings at 11 different prices, and never actually patented his blue.

Lived
1928–1962
Blue Epoch show
Milan, January 1957
IKB formula
Soleau envelope, May 1960; never patented

Yves Klein (1928–1962) was a French artist from Nice, and a judo black belt who trained in Japan. From early on he painted monochromes, canvases of a single color. When visitors to his first shows of orange, yellow, red, pink and blue monochromes treated them as a kind of mosaic, he narrowed down to one color: blue.

With the Paris paint dealer Édouard Adam he found a way to keep synthetic ultramarine as intense on canvas as it is as dry powder, by suspending it in a clear, matte synthetic resin instead of oil, which dulls it. In 1957 in Milan he showed 11 identical blue canvases, each priced differently, betting that every buyer would see something different. The color became International Klein Blue, or IKB.

In May 1960 he deposited the formula in a sealed, dated Soleau envelope, a French way of proving when you invented something. He never patented or trademarked it, so the popular story that he 'owned' a blue isn't true (see owning a color). Adam still sells the binder.

Blue was one of three colors in Klein's private system, with rose pink and gold. Late in life he made pink monochromes and gold ones in real gold leaf, the material that also lights up Klimt's The Kiss. He left a small box of blue pigment, pink pigment and gold leaf as an offering at a monastery in Italy. He staged 'living brush' paintings, the Anthropometries, and showed an empty white gallery called The Void. He died in 1962, aged 34.

Swatches

Colors

Sources

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