Yves Klein (1928-1962) was an agitator of ideas, a
total artist who used his considerable charisma to propagate social
change through art. In his writings and talks, Klein drew on a vast
repertoire of philosophical, scientific, political and occult
materials, synthesizing them into a declamatory propaganda for his own
art. Yves Klein by Himself is a composite biography of one of
the most influential artists of the second half of the twentieth
century. Neither an intellectual biography nor an art-historical
analysis, Yves Klein by Himself is rather a kind of "Klein
reader" that lets the artist speak through his ideas and philosophical
conceptions, and in doing so attempts to reconstruct his "organized
network of obsessions." To this end, it intermixes biographical facts,
a selection of texts by the writers and artists who influenced Klein, a
glossary of keywords with Klein's own definitions derived from
published texts as well as previously unpublished manuscripts and a
selection of critical writings with analyses of Klein's philosophical
ideas by the author and editor of this volume, Klein scholar Klaus
Ottmann. read the full post
Published by Éditions Dilecta. Text by Cecilia Braschi, Rotraut Klein-Moquay, Elena Palumbo, Bruno Corà.
Following Yves Klein USA, Yves Klein Germany and Yves Klein Japan, this book, prepared in collaboration with the Yves Klein Archives, presents nearly 150 archival documents, photographs and letters linked to the artist and his travels through Italy. Through his travels, his exchanges and his artistic or personal encounters, the reader discovers the relationships that Klein was able to create there, in particular with artists such as Lucio Fontana or Piero Manzoni who, like him, knew how to leave a lasting impression on their time. Assisi, Venice, Rome, Milan: each of these cities left a mark on the life of the artist of the blue, whose first exhibition abroad in 1957, Proposte monochrome, epoca blu, took place at the Galerie Apollinaire in Milan.
Published by Mousse Publishing. Text by Georges Petitjean, Wally Caruana, Didier Semin, Kim Akerman.
This volume presents works by 13 Aboriginal artists alongside pieces by the influential French artist Yves Klein (1928–62), whose early childhood art and writings reflect an interest in prehistorical Aboriginal motifs. Artists include: Angkaliya Curtis, Waigan Djanghara, Judy Watson and Sally Gabori.
Published by Dilecta. Text by Terhi Génévrier-Tausti, Denys Riout.
Yves Klein (1928–62) first traveled to Japan as a young man in 1952, motivated primarily by his interest in judo. During his 15 months abroad, Klein had numerous important creative and philosophical revelations that culminated in the launch of his artistic career upon his return to Paris.
Prepared in collaboration with the Yves Klein Archives, this volume details Klein’s relationship with Japan through nearly 150 archival documents, photographs and letters, inviting the reader on his journey from martial arts to fine art at the very beginning of his career. Along the way we learn of Klein’s important encounters with art critic Takachiyo Uemura, painter Keizo Koyama and design professor Masaki Yamaguchi. Yves Klein: Japan provides essential insight into the origins of Klein’s oeuvre as both a groundbreaking visual artist and prolific writer whose short-lived career helped to transform postwar art.
Published by RM/MUAC. Text by Daniela Franco, Klaus Ottmann, Daniel Saldaña París, Jorge Volpi.
This publication accompanies Yves Klein’s (1928–62) first Latin American retrospective, a monumental exhibition that features more than 75 artworks alongside the artist’s letters, drawings, photographs and films. Proceeding chronologically through Klein’s major series, this volume identifies three core concerns in the output of this self-described “painter of space”: the monochrome, the materiality of flesh and the immateriality of art. These themes are explored through Klein’s best-known works, as well as the manifestos and lectures he delivered throughout his career. Essays by Daniela Franco, Klaus Ottmann, Daniel Saldaña París and Jorge Volpi explore Klein’s work with an eye to his influence on contemporary art.
Published by D.A.P./Verlag Kettler. Edited with text by Matthias Koddenberg.
This major new Yves Klein overview shows how Klein transformed his life into a myth that blurred the boundary between art and biography. It includes around 300 unearthed archival photographs--many of which are published for the first time--of Klein, his works, and their production. Always an innovator, Klein spanned many mediums, boldly exploring musical composition, sculpture, performance, photography, theater, film and theoretical writing, in addition to the blue monochrome painting for which he is so famed. Reproductions of artworks are interspersed with photographs of and quotations by Klein, guiding readers through a personal history of key works such as “Leap into the Void” and the Monochrome and Feuer exhibition. Most importantly, this book offers a new look behind the scenes of his performances, uncovers the genesis of his famous Anthropometries and Fire Paintings and portrays Klein at work in his studio, in private settings and on his travels. There are also numerous contact prints with lesser-known photos and snapshots that are not among the more famous pictures released for publication.
Unlike most of his contemporaries, Klein always viewed photography as a lens through which to dramatize his subjects, and chose carefully who could photograph him. The imagery in this monograph blurs the artist’s work and life in a way that both maintains and deconstructs the myth of Yves Klein.
Born in Nice, France, Yves Klein (1928–62) created what he considered his first artwork when he signed the sky above Nice in 1947, making his earliest attempt to capture the immaterial. The artist carved out new aesthetic and theoretical territory based on his philosophical and poetic investigations of space and science, and the practice of Judo, which he described as “the discovery of the human body in a spiritual space.”
Published by Editions Dilecta. Text by Audrey Jeanroy, Yves Klein, Rotraut Klein-Moquay Christelle Lecœr, Claude Parent, Pierre Restany, Philippe Ungar.
Artist Yves Klein (1928–1962) and architect Claude Parent (born 1923) first worked together in 1969, on Klein’s Air Architecture project; subsequent collaborations included the "Pneumatic Rocket" and the Fontaines de Varsovie project. Parent and his office produced professional architectural designs for Klein’s concepts, clarifying their utopian aspirations with exquisite delicacy. Shortly after Klein’s death at the age of 34, his widow, Rotraut Klein-Moquay, and his mother, Marie Raymond, asked Parent to create an architectural design for an Yves Klein Memorial, to be built on a small plot of land above Saint-Paul de Vence in southeastern France. This handsome volume chronicles Klein and Parent’s relationship, with reproductions of drawings, paintings and sculptures, plus archival materials and photographs.
In April 1958, Yves Klein presented an exhibition in a white room at the Iris Clert gallery in Paris, devoid of all objects save for an empty cabinet. This milestone show, later known as the "exhibition of the void," debuted Klein's "immaterialization of painting": "an ambience, a pictorial climate that is invisible but present." Shortly afterward, Klein upped the stakes even further by offering ritualized sales of "zones of immaterial pictorial sensibility"--i.e., "zones" of nothing--in exchange for a certain weight of fine gold, half of which he then in turn dispatched into the Seine (the other half was used to make gold monochromes). Denys Riout's illustrated study is the first devoted entirely to Klein's immaterial works. Drawing on both known and newly discovered documentation, Riout portrays this development in Klein's thought against its cultural backdrop and attendant postwar philosophic and religious discussions on the idea of the void.
PUBLISHER Editions Dilecta
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 6.5 x 8.75 in. / 208 pgs / 1 color / 71 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/28/2011 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2011 p. 103
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9782916275741TRADE List Price: $31.00 CAD $42.00
Published by The Everyday Press. Preface by Ichiro Abé.
In 1952 the 24-year-old Yves Klein left Paris for Japan, to pursue his first love; not art but judo. Klein spent a year and a half in Tokyo, studying mainly at the Kodokan under the ninth-dan judo master Oda. After becoming one of the first Europeans to receive a coveted fourth-dan black belt, Klein returned to France and opened the Judo Académie de Paris. In 1954 the prestigious publisher Grasset published his book Les Fondements du Judo, illustrated with hundreds of photographs of Klein and leading Japanese teachers demonstrating the six major “Katas” (the movements that form the basis of judo). The Foundations of Judo is the first ever English translation of this historical document. Translated and typeset in a facsimile of the 1954 original by British artist Ian Whittlesea, it expresses the fundaments of the art that was Klein's foremost passion.
PUBLISHER The Everyday Press
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 5.5 x 8.75 in. / 224 pgs / illustrated throughout.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 9/30/2010 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: MID WINTER 2010
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780956173805TRADE List Price: $29.95 CAD $39.95
Published by Ediciones Polígrafa. Text by Klaus Ottman.
The career of French artist Yves Klein lasted just eight years (from 1954 to 1962), but in that short span he took Europe by storm. Working in Paris at the height of geometric abstraction and Art Informel, in an intellectual climate dominated by Existentialism, Klein presaged many developments in the postwar avant garde: performance art, Minimalism and Conceptualism (one of his mottoes pronounced, "For color! Against the line and drawing!"). As this volume demonstrates, Klein wrote prolifically, often in the form of manifestos or more ironic texts written to accompany his proto-Conceptual installations. Though Klein is best known for a series of monochromes in his trademark shade, International Klein Blue, his first public showing was of the 1954 artist's book Yves: Peintures, which featured a series of monochromes created in response to cities where he had lived, as a play on the traditional art exhibition catalogue. The medium of the book is consequently an ideal place in which to encounter his art and thought.
Published by Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden/Walker Art Center. Text by Kerry Brougher, Philippe Vergne, Klaus Ottmann, Kaira M. Cabañas, Andria Hickey.
One of the last century's most influential artists, Yves Klein (1928–1962) took the European art scene by storm in a prolific career that lasted only from 1954 to 1962, when he suffered a heart attack at the age of 34. Klein was an innovator who embraced painting, sculpture, performance, photography, music, theater, film, architecture and theoretical writing. Self-identified as “the painter of space,” Klein sought to achieve immaterial spirituality through pure color (primarily an ultramarine blue of his own invention—International Klein Blue) and even went so far as to present white galleries emptied of all artworks for his renowned 1958 exhibition of “the Void.” His diverse oeuvre represents a pivotal transition from modern art's concern with the material object to contemporary notions of the conceptual nature of art. Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers is published to accompany the first major retrospective of the artist's work in the United States in nearly 30 years. It includes examples from all of Klein's major series, including his Anthropometries, Cosmogonies, fire paintings, planetary reliefs and blue monochromes, as well as selections of his lesser-known gold and pink monochromes, body and sponge reliefs, “air architecture” and immaterial works. Essays by curators Kerry Brougher and Philippe Vergne, Klein scholar Klaus Ottmann, art historian Kaira M. Cabañas and curatorial fellow Andria Hickey, as well as archival materials and translations of Klein's published and unpublished writings, offer insights into the artist's endeavors and process. Born in Nice, France, in 1928, Yves Klein created what he considered his first artwork when he signed the sky above Nice in 1947, making his earliest attempt to capture the immaterial. The artist carved out new aesthetic and theoretical territory based on his study of the mystical sect Rosicrucianism, philosophical and poetic investigations of space and science, and the practice of Judo, which he described as “the discovery of the human body in a spiritual space.”
Published by Editions Dilecta. Text by Robert Pincus-Witten, Rotraut Klein-Moquay.
This book, produced in collaboration with the Yves Klein Archives, recounts the relationship between Yves Klein, one of the major artists of the postwar period, and the United States—a relationship of mutual fascination and reciprocal influence. Numerous documents, many of them previously unpublished, bear witness to the close ties that Klein forged with the U.S. The rising stars of the early 1960s American art scene (Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Frank Stella, plus Marcel Duchamp) all make an appearance here, as does President Eisenhower! The book includes an interview with Rotraut Klein-Moquay, who talks about her trip to the United States with Yves Klein in 1961, as well as the artist's comments on his own work. It also includes a hitherto unpublished essay by the American critic Robert Pincus-Witten, who met the protagonists of this story when he worked for dealer Leo Castelli.
PUBLISHER Editions Dilecta
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 7 x 9.75 in. / 204 pgs / 110 color / 50 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 5/31/2010 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2010 p. 69
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9782916275642TRADE List Price: $32.00 CAD $40.00
Yves Klein (1928-1962) was an agitator of ideas, a total artist who used his considerable charisma to propagate social change through art. In his writings and talks, Klein drew on a vast repertoire of philosophical, scientific, political and occult materials, synthesizing them into a declamatory propaganda for his own art. Yves Klein by Himself is a composite biography of one of the most influential artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Neither an intellectual biography nor an art-historical analysis, Yves Klein by Himself is rather a kind of "Klein reader" that lets the artist speak through his ideas and philosophical conceptions, and in doing so attempts to reconstruct his "organized network of obsessions." To this end, it intermixes biographical facts, a selection of texts by the writers and artists who influenced Klein, a glossary of keywords with Klein's own definitions derived from published texts as well as previously unpublished manuscripts and a selection of critical writings with analyses of Klein's philosophical ideas by the author and editor of this volume, Klein scholar Klaus Ottmann.
PUBLISHER Editions Dilecta
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 4.5 x 7.5 in. / 440 pgs.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 6/30/2010 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2010 p. 103
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9782916275734TRADE List Price: $29.00 CAD $39.50
Keenly interested in everything new and free of preconceived notions, children are the ideal viewers of art. Yves Klein: Into the Blue is a playful introduction to the work of one of the founding fathers of contemporary art. With its deliberately non-pedagogical tone and unusual design, the book is also a perfect bedtime story featuring key works by the artist along with original photographs and quotations. In Klein's pictures, children experience a wide range of approaches to painting, from a canvas covered completely with plate gold to a radiant blue sponge, to the imprint of a painted woman's body on paper. This book sends art lovers of all ages on a fantastic journey into the world of Yves Klein, following his development from a daydreamer to an artist who invented his own color, which soon became famous: International Klein Blue. The story is told in vivid colors and images, and a blue coloring pad in the cover, attached to a bookmark, encourages young readers to try out their own ideas on paper.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Essays by Paolo Bianchi, Olivier Berggruen, Nuit Banai, Fr»d»ric Migayrou, Ingrid Pfeiffer, Jean-Michel Ribettes and Nicole Root.
Yves Klein was regarded as a visionary even by his contemporaries. An enfant terrible and outstanding judo enthusiast whose spectacular performances attracted considerable attention in the art world, Klein created a following that only intensified in the wake of his premature death. Having anticipated numerous movements such as Happenings, Performance, Land and Body Art, and Conceptual Art, Klein's manifold oeuvre, realized within a period of only eight years, continues to exercise a decisive influence to this day. This comprehensive retrospective, presented by the Schirn Kunsthalle gallery in Frankfurt, includes over 100 works representing Klein's entire career from his first monochromes in orange, yellow, green, pink, black, and white, to his famous Klein blue monochromes, his sponge relief sculptures, his much-discussed Anthropometries, for which he used female models as live brushes, his monogold paintings, and his last experiments with fire and elements of nature.