Author Description

<p>In the mid-1950s, <b>Yves Klein</b> (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, <b>producing more than 1,000 paintings over seven years</b> 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. <b>International Klein Blue</b> (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 <b>"Blue Revolution"</b> seem to draw us into another dimension, as if hypnotized by a perfect summer sky. Klein was also renowned for his deployment of <b>"living brushes</b>,<b>"</b> 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 <b>pioneer of performance art</b>. 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 <b>unique effects of a single color</b>.</p>