OUT OF THIS WORLD: TWO YVES KLEIN MASTERPIECES

Facebooktwitter

INCLUDING A REDISCOVERED WORK, PREVIOUSLY
IN THE COLLECTION OF LUCIO FONTANA

POST-WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART EVENING AUCTION / Christie’s London, King Street / 27 June 2012, 7pm

London – On the 50th anniversary of Yves Klein‟s death, two masterpieces by the artist will be offered in Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction, London on 27 June. This follows the outstanding result achieved at Christie’s New York last May when the legendary FC 1 (Fire-Color 1), sold for $36,482,500 (£22,619,150), setting a new world record for the artist at auction.
Representing the figurehead of the London auction season is Le Rose du bleu (RE 22) (1960) by far the largest pink sponge relief ever created and included in all the artist‟s major exhibitions over the past 50 years. Previously part of the renowned Madeleine Everaert and Menil collections,
the work finds a perfect counterpoint in Relief éponge bleu (RE 51) (1959; estimate: £6,000,000-9,000,000), the ultramarine blue sponge relief previously owned by Lucio Fontana.

Together, these otherworldly sponge reliefs capture the zeitgeist at the turn of the 1960s; a moment dominated by the Cold War space race. In 1961, the year after Klein created Le Rose du bleu (RE 22), Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin would go down in history as the first man to travel into space. A matter of weeks later, United States president, John F. Kennedy avowed to land a man on the moon within the decade.

Francis Outred, Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie’s Europe: ‘Fifty years after Yves Klein’s death, it is a privilege to be uniting two great masterpieces by the artist in one auction. Together they go towards elaborating his mystical trilogy of colour: ultramarine blue, gold and rose pink. Created at a moment of intense scientific and space exploration, Klein’s works can be seen as prophetic of man’s awesome advances into space; Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin making his
pioneering orbit of planet Earth in 1961. ‘Le Rose du bleu’ is a magnificent sponge relief, the largest to ever be carried out in rose madder. It previously formed part of the Madeleine Everaert and Menil Collections, and was exhibited at ‘Yves Klein: Monochrome und Feuer’, at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld in 1961 – the artist’s only retrospective during his lifetime. ‘Relief éponge bleu’ is one of the very first of Klein’s sponge-reliefs and was previously owned by celebrated ‘Spatial’ artist and patron,
Lucio Fontana. Captured in archive footage of Klein’s major exhibition at Galerie Iris Clert in 1959, it subsequently remained unseen for many years. Its presence in the forthcoming Post-War and Contemporary Art auction at Christie’s represents a major rediscovery‟.

“In the 1950s I didn’t believe in anything irrational. Nevertheless I shared two irrational moments with Yves Klein: the marriage of gold and blue to form pink, and his leap into the void. For the pink, [Klein] united fringes of blue and gold, which when illuminated with light suddenly appeared fuchsia, pink” (Claude Parent).

Rendered in intense velveteen, rose cadmium madder, LE ROSE DU BLEU (illustrated page 1) is an intensely tactile work, made up of nine, large, glowing, and intensely sculptural sponge orbs standing proud from the canvas, densely overlaid with pebbles, all bound together with searing, resplendent pink pigment. The effect is like a lunar landscape, or the shimmering layers of a coral reef: stones, sponge and sand-like pigment simulating depth like the bright light illuminating a tropical sea. The title of the work reveals its important place in the formulation of Klein‟s mystic philosophy; the rose
madder derived from its interaction with blue and gold. Le Rose du bleu (RE22) formed an integral part of the artist‟s landmark retrospective Yves Klein:
Monochrome und Feuer at the Museum Haus Lange,
Krefeld in 1961, which also
introduced the important element of fire to the
artist‟s oeuvre.

RELIEF ÉPONGE BLEU  is one
of a rare group of outstanding early reliefs that
dominated Klein‟s defining exhibition: Bas-reliefs dans
une forêt d’éponges (Bas-Reliefs in a forest of sponges),
held at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris in June 1959. Comprising of a forty-inch
square blue rectangle heavily laden with sponges and
small stones in a way that both disrupts the geometry
of its borders and the flat plane of its surface, the
work is a radiant, intriguing and distinctly three-
dimensional entity.

Facebooktwitter

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

21