Yves Klein

French painter Yves Klein (Nice 1928-1962 Paris) was one of the most emblematic artists of the twentieth century. One of the pioneers of Performance Art and installations, as well as a forerunner of Body Art, Land Art and Conceptual Art, he was one of the founding members of the Nouveau Realisme (New Realism) movement with, among others, Arman and Jean Tinguely and of the Zero Group. During the course of his meteoric eight-year rise, Yves Klein expressed his vision through a wide range of media, including pure colour, architecture, sculpture, literature and music. His art aimed to change a person's life by triggering a profound revolution in his or her aesthetic sensibility. He was deeply convinced that colour, the impalpable and the imagination together are capable of transfiguring reality and affecting a change in personal values. In this manner, man is invited to overcome his limitations: born anew, he finds himself awed by a world that is in turn recreated. In his works, Klein used fire, which has the power of both a destroyer and revealer, as a plastic element that stands for the impalpable. Yves Klein's "wonderful realism" attempted to usher in a new age: the age of a happy and fulfilled mankind in the here and now. Each of the works presented in this stunning book (monochromes, monogolds, performances, and the so called "mur de feu"...) is a token of the intimate experience of this possibility.