Yves Klein (1928–1962) was born in Nice, France, to an artistic family. Although Klein grew up in a creative household, he received no formal artistic training. His major artistic breakthrough came in 1947 while lying on the beach with two friends; they divided the universe between themselves. He possessed the ethereal space surrounding the planet and decided that the blue sky would be his first artwork. In the mid-1950s he then began to exhibit his monochrome paintings in which a canvas was uniformly covered in a single colour. His short career was characterised by many radical gestures. Yves Klein´s “Leap Into the Void” presents the artist soaring upwards from the parapet of a building like a Left Bank Superman. In 1958, he attracted attention with an “Exhibition of emptiness”, an empty gallery space in Paris painted white, titled The Void. In his search for colours, he developed – together with chemists and the French pharmaceutical company, Rhône Poulenc – the patented colour ‘International Yves Klein Blue’ (IKB). Between his oeuvre, Yves Klein´s table, a caffee table filled with IKB pigments, is one of the most iconic contemporary artworks. Moreover, Yves Klein´s art influenced minimal, conceptual and performance art by taking the painting out of the frame and blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture. Yves Klein´s Atropometries are impressions of naked female models smothered in paint, kind of “living brushes”. Using this strategy allowed him to depersonalise the art object. Klein was a pioneer in the development of Performance art, and he is seen as an inspiration to and as a forerunner of Minimal art, as well as Pop art.

Yves Klein

Yves Klein is famous for his explorations into pure color—blue in particular. Employing only his signature, patented pigment, International Klein Blue, the artist made iconic monochromes that aimed to bring art into the realm of pure, atmospheric feeling.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Yves_Klein_Tables_Blue_Gold_Pink_Content_Sheet_UPDATED_2023_xfuoccU.pdf

Probably best known for his signature shade of blue and for the monochrome paintings he created, Yves Klein also made a foray into the world of furniture design. This iconic table is from an edition that was begun in 1963 under the supervision of Yves Klein’s widow, Rotraut Klein-Moquay, based on a model he designed in 1961.

Klein designed the table in three different versions: Klein Blue (IKB) pigment, rose pigment (Monopink/MP), as well as gold/yellow (Monogold/MG). Table Rose is a Perspex-and-glass table filled with Rose pigment. The form of the table is very simple, very elegant, and meant really to disappear, built as it is of plexiglass with a glass top. The pigment is all.

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“ It was in 1947 that the idea of a conscious monochrome vision came to me…Pure, existential space was regularly winking at me, each time in a more impressive manner, and this sensation of total freedom attracted me so powerfully. „

—Yves Klein