Yves Klein

The Hôtel de Caumont is presenting for the first time around sixty works by the Nice-born artist Yves Klein (1928-1962) from a fresh perspective. Given the public nature of Klein’s oeuvre and its resolutely spectacular, even mythical qualities, come and explore the complementary personal an dintimate dimensions of the artist’s life and work.

Yves Klein is certainly one of the most famous French artists from the second half of the twentieth century. Since his premature death in 1962 at the age of thirty-four, his work has gained international recognition. The intense brilliant ultramarine for which he took out a patent—the famous IKB (International Klein Blue)—has become well known beyond the milieu of art connoisseurs.

The artist held many exhibitions that enabled him to highlight the various aspects of his prolific and varied oeuvre, created in a highly productive phase lasting just eight years. However, up until this point, there had rarely been a focus on the links between his private life and his bold and radical works aimed at a broad audience.

By focusing on the artist’s family origins and circles of friends, his studios, and his relations with his models, the exhibition presents you the material conditions of the artist’s work and his intellectual processes, spiritual dimension, and the humour often underlying the apparent earnestness of his approach.

Alongside the most emblematic masterpieces—including the Monochrome and Sculpture Éponge (Sponge Sculpture) works, the gilded Monogold paintings, Anthropométries, and Peintures de Feu (Fire Paintings)—, come discover less well-known works, as well as previously unseen archive material and objects from his studio. Various works by other artists will also be exhibited, as well as collaborative projects, attesting to the friendships and relationships of creative complicity Klein cultivated with colleagues and friends, such as Arman, Christo, Martial Raysse, and Jean Tinguely.

Exhibition produced in collaboration with Archives Klein